


The Passing of Peggy Gallagher

by Jeevey



Category: Oasis (Band)
Genre: Brothers, Brothers to Lovers, Catholics, Jealousy, Just gonna keep pushing up this chapter count, M/M, Reconciliation, Sibling Rivalry, Slow Burn, Walking tour of Manchester, noel is a goddamn mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:33:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 44,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21713830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeevey/pseuds/Jeevey
Summary: "Your mother is in perfect health, lads, except that she's dying of congestive heart failure."
Relationships: Liam Gallagher/Noel Gallagher
Comments: 227
Kudos: 125





	1. Landed

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [Peggy Gallagher的逝去](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24438421) by [Jeevey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeevey/pseuds/Jeevey), [TornadoMustaine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TornadoMustaine/pseuds/TornadoMustaine)



> Okay, y'all. Since I started writing this story it's morphed into something quite different to the eight chapters of bickery fluff that I originally intended. At the time of writing (late 2019 to early 2020) it's set a year or two in the future. Herein are violated fandom norms. This thing is slow, there's a lot of minor characters, Noel's a major dick, they don't fuck enough. For those of you who are reading and commenting, it's the breath of life to this writer. Thanks for hanging in with me. For those whose cuppa this isn't, I'll entertain ficlet requests to write when it's done.

It was a rainy day in March when Noel touched down in Manchester. Of course it’s rainy, of course it’s fucking March he thought, as he made his way out of the airport and into the waiting car. Manchester in winter was heavy, wet, and dull as hell, and somehow March was always its last sullen tantrum. There was no season in which he could travel to this city without a load of precautions, but late winter was the most unpleasant one. He always boarded last, sat in the forwardmost seat, exited first, and the flight crew were clearly instructed not to speak to him for any reason lest the words, Mr. Gallagher, be overheard by the other passengers. That had happened once and god, what a shit show.

At least there’s always first class, he thought, as he made his way through the back passages reserved for high-profile travelers. He often heard people complain about the downsides of fame but as far as Noel was concerned, it was an unqualified improvement. Once or twice he had spoken with other poor kids who had made as good as he had, and there seemed to be agreement among them: complaining about the pains of being rich is unique to those who were born rich. 

Among Noel’s favorite things about success was a personal assistant who knew how to spend his money to make things easy. And this was easy, as it should be--a short trip North to visit his mum. His mother's refusal to move out of Burnage was an eternal mystery to Noel, but she was adamant. No London, no Milan, not even Didsbury or Chorlton. So here he was, on his way back to his hometown, where he was as likely to get shot, pushed in the river, or clubbed over the head with a beer bottle as not.

Strangely, the invitation had come from Paul, not their mother. He had texted simply asking: Mam wants to know if you can come up on Friday? Noel had plans of course, but he could come; he texted Bono to say something had come up and told Cecile to book a flight.

The rain had that gritty Manchester appearance, as though it might pit the windscreen, and he turned up his collar against it as he climbed out of the cab in front of his mother’s house. His brother Paul met him the door, and Noel was suddenly awash in the scents of childhood: tea, cinnamon candles, lavender hand soap, the odor of her vinyl curtains, and the stuffy, wood-chip scent of the council house itself. It aroused a strange mix of visceral feelings in his chest, of fear and longing, rage and bliss, which is why he nearly punched Liam in the teeth without a second thought when he came bumbling through the passage door.

Liam froze, and they eyed each other like two cats until Noel turned a look of betrayal on Paul.

“You didn’t say--” 

Paul made a signal for quiet. 

“Don’t fucking hush me!” Noel whispered viciously. “Come for Friday, you said. Mam would be tickled, you said. I left my kids’ football match to rub shoulders with this gobshite? And you--”

“Is that Noely?” called his mother from the other room so eagerly that he stopped, abashed. 

“Go on,” said Paul, and Noel had just a moment to wonder why Paul’s voice sounded so strange before he stepped through the door and saw. Oh. His darling, tiny, indomitable mum. She looked...awful. 

The color of clay, she lay in her easy chair like a hospital gurney. Her legs and feet were grossly swollen, and he could hear her labored breathing from across the room. Nevertheless, she stretched out her hand and smiled, and he went. He saw a warning look directed over his shoulder, _Stuff it, you two,_ before she turned her attention fully on him.

This was a magic trick she did, and the magic never failed. He took her hand and sat down on the arm of her chair, and the world ceased to exist. It was only him and Mam. 

“How are you feeling?” he murmured.

“Oh, better now you're here,” she said, and squeezed his hand. But it was evident that she wasn’t. Her chest heaved as if she’d been running and a sheen of sweat lit her temples. He watched with growing concern as she valiantly pretended that nothing was wrong, asking him about his new tunes, the state of his next album. He answered mechanically while he felt the birdlike bones and observed the dark circles under her eyes, wondering what in God's name had happened. He was just telling her about his latest set of songs when she interrupted. 

“I’m sorry, Noely, but would you just--” And she began to whoop the most terrifying fit of coughing he had ever witnessed. In an instant Paul was at her elbow, helping her to sit upright, holding a napkin to her mouth, and when she had coughed herself into exhaustion, easing her back into her chair. Noel watched the whole thing in horror. She fell asleep immediately, but her breathing was all wrong and even the ease with which she slipped into sleep was frightening.

He turned to his brothers. “Would you just--in here?” he said, and marched into the kitchen. “Now,” he said, when they all stood under its fluorescent light, “Would one of you please tell me what the _bloody_ hell is going on?”

“Well,” said Paul uneasily. “She hasn’t been feeling very well, has she? And she asked if you was coming up, and she asked if you was coming up, so I just--”

“Yes I can _see_ that she hasn’t been feeling very well," Noel said. "Has she seen a doctor?” 

Paul opened his mouth.

“Has she seen a doctor?” Noel repeated. “Right. Give me the phone.” And God help him, she still had a land line with a curly cord mounted on the wall, and a list of autodial numbers written in pencil under a plastic cover. Her medical office was near the top, just after Liam and himself.

“Yes, I need to speak with Dr. Gregson about Peggy Gallagher. No, I can’t speak with a medical assistant. No, I can’t leave a message! Listen, you---” he controlled himself with an effort. “Now listen to me. This is Noel fucking Gallagher and I need to speak to Dr. Gregson about his patient Peggy Gallagher, _my mother_ , right. this. minute.”

An hour later Dr Gregson entered the house, a mild little man with a walrus mustache, who greeted their mother like an old friend. The three of them watched in fascination as he asked about her news and mutual friends, then about her sleep and bowels.

“Get out of here, the lot of you!” she cried in embarrassment when he began to get out his kit. 

Noel went out on the kerb and began to make calls, cancelling his engagements for the following day. He had planned to be back by afternoon but obviously, this circus needed a handler.

Liam watched his brother through the front passage window. Through the paneled door he could hear the muffled questions of the doctor and his mother’s replies. Their quiet chatter soothed his nerves, which had been in a state of panic ever since he walked into the house and realized that Noel wasn’t there--that something terrible was happening to their mother and there was no one to help. Paul didn’t count, obviously, since he’d cocked everything up already.

Noel paced the width of the house and back. Liam was just as happy that he was out there talking in that icy voice to somebody else, not in here talking to him. He made shit happen, did Noel. Noel counted. The wind tossed up his hair as he walked, and his nose seemed to curve down like a severe little bird as he frowned at a text. Noel looked…right somehow, being almost old, as they all were now. With his white button-down shirt a little open at the neck and his elegant calf-colored shoes he looked like--like a real man, Liam thought, and felt again the unexpected squeeze of his heart when Noel had walked in and for a moment looked so light, so open, ready to speak--the moment before he saw Liam and his face had closed like a fist.

Noel turned toward the house, his brow furrowed as he answered a question, and Liam hurriedly pushed the curtain closed so he wouldn’t see.

A little while later the three of them sat in a row facing Dr. Gregson.

“Well, lads. Your mother’s in perfect health, except that she’s dying of congestive heart failure,” he said. Three faces turned toward their mother. “She knows,” he added.

Noel struggled to understand. “You know. Mam. You knew??” he asked. “How long has this been going on? Isn’t there anything we can do? I mean, surgery, anything--money isn’t an issue, obviously--”

“I’m tired, Noely” their mother said quietly. “I don’t want the fuss and bother, to be out of me house, and to be tortured with the machines and all. The doctor and I have been watching things here and it’s just getting close to time, is all.”

“We can get you to a hospital--”

“No we can’t,” said Liam suddenly.

“What?” Noel turned on him. “You fucking lazy twat. You’re saying we should deny her medical treatment that could help, should let her die here?”

“Are you off yer head? She’s seventy-six, Noel. Lock her up in one of those places, hook her to a machine, cut her to bits, and for what? She'd be dead in a week, and miserable betweentime.”

“Seventy-seven,” put in their mother.

Liam covered her hand with his own and turned back to his brother. “No _fuckin’_ way are you takin’ me Mam out of her house and givin’ her to those cannibals, not when she wants to stay here. I’ll kill her meself first.” He looked at the doctor. “How long?”

“Not long,” the doctor admitted. “A few days, a week. No more.”

“We’ll bring what she needs here, yeah?” The doctor nodded. Liam turned his gaze to Noel, questioning and blue. “And we’ll stay?” Reluctantly, Noelnodded. 

“Good lads. Aye, that we can do.” The doctor rose and moved toward their mother. “Have Noel call the office, they’ll get everything you need.” He bent over their mother and whispered something in her ear, something that made her smile the sweetest smile they had seen in years. “I’ll come ‘round again tomorrow. Call me if you have any questions.”

Noel followed him out into the passage. “Thank you for coming, doctor, and I’m sorry to be--a little short with you. Just bill everything to me, and we’ll sort it.”

The doctor chuckled and patted his shoulder. “Ah, lad. Your mother and I go back to when you were nothing but a twinkle in her eye. You can shove your bill up your prickly white arse.”


	2. The Lady Issues a Command

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I said go to bed."
> 
> "And I said bugger off."

Noel began making calls before the door was closed behind the doctor, and soon the house exploded in a frenzy of activity. A crew arrived with an electric hospital bed, which had to be taken apart to nothing but pegs in order to fit through the narrow front passage and then reconstructed in the living room. Paul’s old room was turned into a lumber room to store the shifted furniture. Someone brought cases of pasty white liquid which was supposed to be what you fed to dying people, and which Liam thought was likely to send her off straight away. A nurse came to show them how to turn their mother safely and get her to the loo, and left a table full of medications and instructions.

Their mother herself was fitted with a pair of inflatable leggings that covered her from instep to knee, and which slowly tightened and released with a slow huffing noise which would, the nurse explained, keep their mother from forming blood clots in her toes which would stroke her out like a light if they reached her brain. Liam thought it sounded like a sleepy, dutiful dragon, and decided he liked it right away. He liked its rumbly snore and the way turned his mother’s toes first dark red, then a clearer healthy pink, and now and then he would reach over to help it along with a friendly tweak.

Noel oversaw the whole operation, listened attentively to the nurse, filled a little notepad with things to remember, and steadfastly ignored the abyss of fear in his gut. Paul, he kept busy with tea and moving shit about. Liam he ignored completely.

It was late when at last Peggy was mounted in her tall new bed, looking rather pleased and pink like a lady with a new carriage. Her cheeks were flushed with activity, but Noel could tell she was paggered to the bone. They had ordered in Chinese hours ago, Noel had sent Paul home, and Liam was still faffing about packing her knicknacks to move upstairs. Noel sat going over his notes, but slowly became aware that his mother had something to say. 

“Come over here, the two of you," she said at last. Noel found himself seated at her side, opposite Liam on the crackly new bed.

She took Liam’s hand. She looked at him a long time and touched his hair. At last she spoke.

“Liam, Liam,” she sighed. “My fair, fey boy, my last. How I thought you’d be the death of me, with your wild ways! Many’s the night I laid awake for fear for you, and many’s the night I wondered if you’d live to see the morning. I love you more than life itself.” He bent his forehead for her kiss. “Now, for the love of god, shut your gob, and keep it shut.”

She turned to Noel. Her eyes moved over his face like fingers, and he felt a flush that was both embarrassment and pride. “Noel. My proud, brave, ambitious boy. You did it all, just as you said you would, and you made a better life for us-- for yourself, for your children, and theirs. The bastards never had you down, not for a second. I couldn’t be prouder of you. But it’s done now. You’ve won. So try not to be such a cunt, love.”

She fixed them with her eagle eye and spoke with slow emphasis. “Now. I have three sons. You have two brothers, and when I’m gone that’s all you’ll have. There’s been a lot of water gone between you two. I suppose neither one was right all the time, but to be honest I dinna care.” She pulled herself upright. “Now, I want you both to shake hands like gentlemen, and let’s hear nothing more about it.”

Noel turned to Liam and, for the first time in years, looked closely at his brother’s face. Time had settled the skin like silk over his bones, yes. But he retained, unbelievably, the expression of someone watching a fireworks show. Noel didn’t understand it, Liam’s incredible, unguarded simplicity. He felt certain his brother wasn’t actually retarded. And yet the world sprang into being anew for him each moment, and the joy, the surprise, or rage of each firework second slayed him continually.

Liam regarded him now with a set to his jaw that suggested a tantrum brewing, but behind that was fear, curiosity and--Noel blinked to be sure--a huge and hungry longing. Noel didn’t look at his mother. He didn’t want to see what hope might live in her face. At last he put out his hand.

He had forgotten that Liam was always hot to the touch, and almost dropped his hand in startlement. But Liam kept it folded tight in his big paw, and they kept on looking at each other. Liam’s face was perfectly blank but Noel could feel as if through his skin all his thoughts, and the thousand conversations they might have, all of which ended with somebody screaming _Fuck you, you prick!_

Mam was right. There really wasn’t a single word to be said, and Liam had somehow known it first. 

The silence was broken by a tremendous yawn from their mother. “Good lads,” she murmured sleepily.

Noel stood. “Go on up to bed,” he said to his brother. “Paul said he made up our room. I’m going to sleep down here, and the nurse will be back in the morning.”

“Na,” said Liam. “I already promised Mam I’d sleep in ‘er armchair, like.” He bounced in the brown armchair is if it were a child’s bed. Noel had pulled it into place there himself, intending to spend the night next to her.

“I said go up to bed.”

“And I said I’m not doin’ it.” Liam fixed him with a hard blue look and went to the cupboard where spare duvets were kept. “Yer not me dad. Bugger off.”

When Noel went upstairs Liam was clicking through the channels with a blue light on his face. His other hand rested on their mother’s.


	3. Last Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Just because. Because people are bad and you should never, ever trust them, no one at all, nobody but me and Mam. And don’t ever let anyone touch you for money."
> 
> “Anyway, we can get Mam the best presents ever. I’ll bet mine will be a hundred times better than yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it's the Gallagher family Christmas. I wanted one, so you got it. Merry Christmas, everyone.
> 
> A note: I've intentionally not read Paul Gallagher's book. For the sake of fic, I think it's better to go by instinct. My research exposures are limited to the film Supersonic and this fantastic article, written by Thomas Beller in 1997, and from which I've stolen, but only a little.  
> https://www.spin.com/featured/oasis-liam-gallagher-noel-gallagher-cover-interview-1997/

Noel went for a long walk the next morning to sort business at home, including explaining the situation to his wife, cancelling studio sessions, and postponing radio appearances. Boring stuff, but myriad. Meanwhile, he found that it was still impossible to buy a decent cup of coffee in Burnage. He walked back with a paper cup of swill and messaged Cecile with her hundredth assignment of the day: “Send coffee. I am in hell. Also coffeemaker.”

He returned home to discover that his mother had already become best of friends with the nurse, Joan. She was a rosy woman with arms like a drover, a no-nonsense expression, and boundless energy. Noel nearly choked to see Liam seated politely in the living room, enumerating his children and their habits for her benefit, clearly at their mother’s request. 

“Gene’s 18 now, and he’s got a girlfriend he’s mad about,” he was saying when Noel walked in. “I never remember her name, though. Lisa, or Lori, or something.”

“Lexie,” their mother said. Liam and Noel both looked at her, startled. “Alexandra Ashford is her name. He calls her Lexie.”

“How do you remember that kind of bollocks?” Liam wondered.

“He told me himself when he was up a few weeks ago. It’s not so hard if you’ve a mind to remember.”

“Gene-- _Gene_ was up here for a visit? _My_ Gene?”

“Aye, so.” their mother replied. “He comes up for a day or so now and again.”

“He told me he was out fornicating and taking drugs!” Liam said, scandalized.

“And sometimes he might do. But sometimes,” their mother replied, “he’s visiting his old gran.”

“That lad needs a talking to,” said Liam. “I’m not having it.”

Noel opened his mouth.

“Mister Noel,” Joan interrupted. “Can we get this young lady a clean set of clothes?”

“Of course,” Noel replied, and retreated upstairs.

He opened the door to his mother’s room softly. He had been here only very rarely; they had moved in when he was already nearly grown and had a healthy horror of encountering her underthings. But today he carefully surveyed the closet and dressers for warm, soft clothes. She must get cold, sitting so still. It was dusty but tidy, with pajamas neatly hung and a book and a glass next to--dear god. Noel sat down quite suddenly. 

On her nightstand was a bright crystal vase with curlicue flowers cut in, holding the graceful skeletons of a few purple tulips. Jesus Christ. He remembered.

The first few months in the new house after escaping Da were an anxious time, and at just seventeen Noel didn’t understand why. He had dreamed so long about being safe away--they all had--so why wasn’t everyone happier? 

He wondered about it until his mother came to him one day, eyes huge with fear, and made him swear not to let Liam out of his sight until her say-so. After that he understood. Liam was his father’s favorite, the only one he had a pleasant word for, the only one he never painted black-and-blue on a weekend. And there he sat, just a few miles away, alone in that miserable flat. 

If he took Liam, they would never, never get him back. 

So he did as she said. He ate and slept and played and damn near bathed with Liam for months, and taught the kid everything he knew to keep him from wandering off in boredom. He taught him to nick oranges from the grocery, to sell loose cigarettes to the bums downtown for pocket money, to sit quietly two rows ahead while Noel was necking with a girl at the movies, to hustle dice on the street. Liam responded to the new attention by becoming utterly voracious for it. He became a bouncing, chattering shadow who interrupted Noel in the toilet, whilst necking at the movies, and who climbed into his fucking bed at night to ask inane questions about death and God. All this Noel could accept, but he solomnly swore to beat Liam bloody if he ever laid a finger on his guitar. And for a wonder, Liam obeyed.

In late October Paul came home with word that the old fella had returned home to Ireland. Noel sent Liam to the park by himself that very minute and played guitar in blessed silence for hours. After that things got better in a hurry. They learned that they could play records out loud and bring friends round the house, and that sometimes Mam would make a pudding and laugh and talk on a Saturday night. By Christmastime they were all three out of their heads with excitement and freedom. It wasn’t until Liam asked about Christmas dinner and Noel saw his mother’s face fall that he realized there was still more to do.

So there were he and Liam in the end, standing outside the Tesco on a cold Tuesday. 

“All right,” Noel said. “You’re getting potatoes and butter, and I’ll get swedes and carrots. We’ll pay for those, ‘cos they’re cheap.”

“Why not nick all of it and have more money left over?” asked Liam.

“You have to buy something to show that you haven’t been stealing,” Noel explained. “If you gawk around and leave without paying, they’ll know for sure you’ve nicked something. So you take the veg and go have a look at the ice cream or something, and I’ll get the roast--”

“I can get the roast!”

“You’re not getting shit.”

“Make it a ham, though?”

“It’s not gonna be a fuckin' ham.”

“Why not?”

“Because how’m I gonna get out of the store with a fuckin' ham under me jacket? I’ll know what to get when I see it. You fuck right off to the ice cream.”

And it worked. They paid £2.50 for the veg and butter and Liam badgered him for ice cream so convincingly that the checkout woman rolled her eyes in sympathy and Noel himself nearly forgot that he had several kilos of expensive beefsteak in his armpit. 

Once down the street they surveyed their goods. “This is tops. Well done,” he said. Liam flushed like a rose. “Now we need presents. Which means we need money.”

“But we don’t have any m--”

“I know, twat,” Noel said. He pulled a mostly full packet of cigarettes from his pocket. “Take these down to the bridge and sell them. Don’t take less than 20p apiece. I’m taking this lot round home and going downtown, and we’ll shop tomorrow.”

“But how are you--”

“Fuck off. See that you’re home by dark.”

He got off the bus at Manchester Arndale with his guitar in hand, feeling a little shaky. He didn’t see any other buskers, didn’t know how it was done. He just looked for the busiest side of the entrance and set his case on the ground there, open for passersby. It was then that he discovered that he didn’t know anything well enough to play all the way through except the Beatles, and also that he fucking hated everybody. 

He started with Taxman and Paperback Writer and got nothing. Not two pence! Unbelievable. No wonder he hated everyone, if they couldn’t notice fucking genius when it hit them in the face. Served them right.

Eventually he noticed the startled glances of those who did look at him as they passed, and decided that it must be showing on his face somehow. He looked at the ground and dropped into the cheesiest song he knew, With Love From Me to You. Ah, there. A pause, and a clink. 

After that it became a game. He would watch the approaching feet, guess a tune to fit the shoes, and more often than not they would slow down, stop, and a coin would clink. Turned out the old ladies with sensible shoes and chubby ankles were always having a little Twist and Shout. It became actually boring after he realized that he always guessed right. He became distracted by a tune of his own, trying to find the right way into to the flat VI chord, when he saw the slow approach of--of the most magnificent pair of boots he’d ever seen in his life.

She stood intent and smiling, as though she had a secret. Tall, and maybe not much younger than his mother, but good god, what was a woman like this doing in Manchester? An extravagant tailcoat embroidered in dark gold, like something that might be worn by a man except totally fucking not, and a cloud of dark hair--severe dark brows, round white cheeks, and a dimple. Those boots and a vast expanse of leg like a sculpture. Fuck me, he thought. She just stood and listened.

He was playing the same 8 bars over and over. He knew it, but couldn't stop. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t looking. All he could do was maintain his hard level stare. She returned it, gave a secret smile--and dropped a tenner in his case. In another second she was gone.

“Young man, do you have a permit to busk here?”

It was a fat coppa, hurrying to save the world from poor kids trying to buy their mam Christmas presents. Noel grabbed his case and ran.

Liam poured out a shower of change on Noel’s bed. “Isn’t it great!” he cried. “We can get her anything!”

“Where did you get this?” Noel demanded.

“I made it.”

“You never made all this selling loose fags.”

“I did too, then,” he said rebelliously.

“I told you before, don’t fuckin’ lie to me. I’ll always know.” 

“All right, then. Big Sara didn’t want any fags ‘cos she had her own, but she said she’d give me 50p for a kiss. And she did! Then they all did, and now I have a load of money. So there.”

“Jesus Christ. You sold kisses to the rough folk under the fuckin’ railway bridge?”

“No, the flyover.”

“Fuck me.” Stupid, stupid. Noel was the stupidest ever--to turn a kid like Liam out on the street alone! Anything could have happened--

“Did any of them touch you?” he asked suddenly.

“What?”

“Touch you,” he repeated, “did anyone touch you up? Is any of them a fuckin’ pedo, is what I want to know.”

“The tall one squeezed me bum a bit,” Liam admitted.

“Long Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll fuckin’ kill him. Liam. Listen to me.” He bent down and got very close to Liam’s face. “Don’t ever go down there by yourself again. Not for any reason, not ever. Do you understand? I was wrong to ask. I should have done it, I wasn’t thinking--”

“I can do things by myself.”

“Not that, you can’t.” Christ, he must be a fucking idiot, sending a pretty little boy out alone to sell shit to junkies and winos. “Swear it. I’m not joking.” 

Liam finally began to look a little scared, and about fucking time. “Okay. I promise. But why?”

“Just because. Because people are bad and you should never, ever trust them, no one at all, nobody but me and Mam. And don’t ever sell kisses. And don’t let people touch you for money. And don’t ever touch anyone for--Christ, never mind. Just stay close, and if you need money ask me. I’ll show you how to get it.”

Liam surveyed the shiny pool of change with satisfaction. “Anyway, we can get Mam the best presents ever. I’ll bet mine will be a hundred times better than yours.”

“Probably it will,” Noel sighed. 

They skipped off the escalator at the ladies’ floor at Debenhams. They only ever bought clothes out at Boyes' where the cheap things were, and Noel had never been here before. They strolled around getting the lay of things and trying to look like legitimate customers, which, Noel reminded himself, they were. 

“Can I help you find anything, sir?” It took Noel a minute to realize that the shop lady was speaking to him. 

“I’m looking for a gift for a woman.”

“I see,” she said politely. “Is it a very young woman you’re shopping for?”

“It’s me mam.”

She smiled more warmly at that. She was, he saw now, older than Mam but yet a little pretty, with a pencil skirt and blazer and silver hair up in a bun. Something like he imagined his mother might look like if things--if everything--had been completely different. 

“Do you have ideas about what she might like?” she asked. 

Noel realized for the first time that he had no idea what his mother liked. Paid bills, buses to work that ran on time, sticky kisses from Liam, but nothing that he could buy in a store. Nothing that was her, herself. 

“I don’t know,” he said blankly.

She led him to a less busy part of the floor. “Now. Tell me about your mam,” she said. “What’s she like?”

She’s...soft. Very soft. She’s a love. But also tough as anything. And slow. Never in a rush, takes her time. Always listens.”

“Does she like jewelry and nice clothes?” 

“God, no. Or maybe she does, but she doesn’t have’em. She works in a bakery, like. In the back. She might be a little plain, I suppose? She doesn’t do with pretty things.”

“But she likes to look at pretty things?”

“I think she must. We always have blue curtains, and she makes us wear clean clothes, when she can see us at least.” 

“And you want something she can keep by her, not something that she’ll use up like a nice perfume?”

“Yeah. I want something that will last forever.”

“Ah. I know just the thing.” 

She led him to a part of the store that was covered with sparkling glass, and held out a vase so clear it seemed to glitter, with curlicue flowers cut in. It was surprisingly heavy in his hand.

“Yeah. This is it,” he said.

“What a thoughtful gift this is," she told him. "It’s beautiful just as it is, but she can use it for flowers when there are any. And you can always give her new ones to put in--a gift in a gift.”

He grinned.

“Noel, look what I found!” Liam came bounding back down the walkway, waving a little box. “ He held it out proudly. Inside nestled a pair of shocking red leatherette gloves, with tulle roses at the wrists.

“Wow, those are pretty bright,” Noel said.

“Yeah," he said with relish. "She’s gonna love ‘em.”

“I think she will, lovey,” the shop lady said, suppressing a smile. “I feel sure she will.”

Noel pretended to be rudely awakened when Liam landed on his bed in the dark on Christmas morning, but the secret truth was that he had been lying awake for hours, keyed up and wondering if he had got everything right. He pretended to tell Liam to go back to sleep, but secretly he envied his unrestrained joy as he followed him across the hall and watched him land on her bed like a hungry puppy. 

“Mam! Mam!. Wake up, it’s Christmas. We got you presents!”

Their mother was a mumbly shadow in the dark at first, but at last they got her bedside lamp on and herself talking sense. Liam had wriggled under her blankets without hesitation, but Noel waited until she patted the bed beside her to sit.

“Now tell me again, but slowly,” she said.

“We made Christmas! With presents and dinner and everything! And I have toffee cakes! Can you make caramel sauce?”

Noel gave him a sharp look. _Where the hell did you get toffee cakes?_ he asked silently. Liam just blinked at him.

“And we did it by ourselves, all of it!” Liam cried. “And bought you presents with our own money. You never had a present before, did you?”

“Not in a long time, love,” their mother said. 

“Noel, give her yours!”

“What? No! You’re a kid, you go first.”

“You’d older’n me and you’re gonna die first, so you go,” Liam said. 

So Noel shuffled across the hall and brought back his awkward package. The shop woman had given him a lovely box for the vase, but he wanted to give it with flowers in and so had resorted to a crumpled tent of wrapping paper which only loosely covered the arching stems beneath. He managed to make it back to the bed without spilling water all over, and held it while his mother prised the paper apart. 

Oh!” she gasped, and fell quite silent, with one hand over her mouth and her brows making a strange question mark over her eyes.

“Is it all right?” Liam asked. “Why are you crying? Did you want red ones? I told him red but--”

She buried her face on her knees. They could see her thin shoulders shaking in silent sobs. Liam patted her back, but Noel was frozen in agonized doubt. At last she sat up and wiped her face.

“No! No, it’s more than lovely, it’s perfect. I’m just very, very happy right now is all, and so very proud. Oh, Noel!” 

After that Liam gave his gloves, which made her laugh and then cry again, and then they all got warm under the blanket together and talked until the sun came up.

That was how it was. And here it was still by her bedside, still with tulips. Noel could hear a murmur of voices downstairs. He put out his hand and opened the bedside table drawer, and there were the red gloves in their box.

And this is how it is now, he thought. The Christmas things lasting forever, but he and Liam not speaking for however many years, and Liam with scars on him from Noel’s own hand, and Mam dying in the living room. He put his head in his hands and wept.


	4. Dying of the Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you have a single idea how fuckin' apeshit things would go if people knew we were both here?"
> 
> "Oh."

Later, after Joan had gone, the front bell rang. Noel went to the door and took a box of groceries from the boy on the step. He had kept a standing order with the local grocery to send round a box of food stuff each week for years. There were a lot of things his mother wouldn’t accept from her sons, but Noel didn’t even ask about this one. It was stupid for an old woman to carry home her little sacks of groceries on the bus every few days, and he wasn’t having it.

He carried it past her, awake after a nap and quietly chatting with Paul and Liam, and began unpacking on the kitchen worktop. But the order was all wrong somehow. He poked through the entire box to be sure. Bangers, beef roast, potatoes prepped in a plastic jar--a cabbage, for fuck’s sake--but no sole or salad greens.

“Mam?” he said with his head through the kitchen door. “There’s summat wrong with your groceries. They sent over all the wrong stuff. Has this happened before?”

“No, those are Liam’s,” Mam said calmly. “Yours usually come in just before tea.”

Liam’s head jerked up, and they stared at each other. Liam-- _Liam_ had groceries sent round every week? Well, but these were bad groceries. All this beef and pork would clog her arteries in no time; in fact, it already had. No fucking wonder she had heart disease. 

Liam ambled into the kitchen and began to unpack. Noel knelt and began clearing out the fridge to make room. He had hardly been in the kitchen yet but it looked---well, it looked like the refrigerator of someone who hadn’t felt well in quite a while. In fact, the more he threw out expired milk and moldy vegetables the more he realized how badly off she had been, and wondered what exactly she had been eating--or if she had at all. How long had this been going on, and how had he not even known?

“Give us the scouring powder,” he said to Liam.

“What?”

“The scouring powder. Under the sink. You’re in the fuckin’ way.”

“Oh.” 

Liam handed it out, and Noel scrubbed out the fridge while steam built between his ears. No wonder Liam didn’t know where the cleaning things were kept. He’d probably never cleaned anything in his entire life, just like he’d never had a real fucking job. Just like he’d never read a damn thing about nutrition, or old people. Or dying people. He held out his hand, and Liam began to pass down refrigerator items. With every one, Noel felt himself become more angry. All this fucking coal miner’s food! He couldn’t stop the _pfft_ sound that passed his lips when Liam passed down a single pint of porter. Mam didn’t even drink!

“Everything all right?” Liam asked.

Noel stood and looked him in the eye. “I just can’t fuckin’ stand you, is all.”

Liam’s face took on an even sulkier expression. “Yeah. Well, there’s two of us.”

“Don’t you have someplace to be? Drugs to score, somebody to impregnate?”

Liam turned on his heel and Noel heard three doors close: kitchen, passage, front. Noel made himself tea and went to sit with his mother.

Just before sunset the sky cleared out and a piercing bit of sun fell in from the west. Noel was in the back garden for a bit of air when his phone buzzed. Fuck. He had disabled or blocked everything when he arrived and found everything such a shit show--everything but Anais, Cecile, and Liam’s twitter. 

The fact that he followed his brother on a ghost account was one of Noel’s darkest secrets, concealed from everybody including his wife. But really it was the only way to keep an eye on what Liam was up to, making sure he wasn’t exploding the planet or promising the return of Jesus as John Lennon or something. It was mostly drunk tweets slagging off other people’s records or praising his own, but still it made Noel feel better, knowing rather than not. Liam had been surprisingly--and quite fucking correctly--quiet since they’d arrived. But now just as he was kicking his heels against the brick wall in the dying light and thinking about having a smoke for old time’s sake, there came a buzz in his pocket. 

“Northern suns fucking fantastic tonight. Hope you all are happy as me today. Fucking treasure it, cunts," it read.

Of course the thread immediately lit up with dozens of comments. 

“Fantastic here too, mate. Thanks!”

“North? Where are you?”

"Is everything all right?"

Noel tore inside and up the stairs and slammed their room open. “What the hell is this?” he demanded. 

Liam lay upside down on the bed with his head dangling over to catch a spear of light, exactly the way he had when they were kids.

“What?”

Noel held up the phone. “What do you mean, what. This. Are you an idiot? Do you want hundreds of fuckin’ journalists lined up outside our mother’s deathbed? Do you have a single idea how fuckin’ apeshit things would go if people knew we were both here?”

“Oh.” 

“Right, fucking oh. Fix this. Now.” 

Liam held his phone up to his nose to punch a few buttons and glared, still upside down. Noel’s buzzed.

“Out for a late run on the heath, mate. Brilliant out here. AS YOU WERE,” it read.

“Better?”

“Better, yeah. And Jesus, Liam. This is not a fuckin’ joke. If you let it slip in any way that we’re here--if you mention Manchester, or the north, or me, or Mam--”

“I wouldn’t fuckin’ talk about Mam.”

“Yeah well, I wouldn’t think you _would_ but there’s no guarantee 'cause you’re a fuckin’ idiot, aren’t you.”

He went down to sit with their mother. He found her apparently sleeping, but breathing like a fire engine, eyelids fluttering in distress. He adjusted the bed so that she was more upright, but she only slumped down in it like a doll. He tried tucking pillows under her arm to prop her up, but she was so limp. The fucking pumps on her feet wouldn’t shut up, and her hands were so cold. He dropped a pillow and rubbed his eyes, swearing.

“Noel.” 

“Yeah, Mam.”

“In the roll top desk. There’s a pigeonhole on the left. Look at the papers there, please.”

He found and opened them, a thick sheaf of solicitor’s parchment. His mother’s signature, and an embossed notary’s seal. A do not resuscitate order.

“You understand?” she asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I understand.” He sat down and leaned his head on her bed. She stroked his hair, delicate as a leaf, and together they watched the last of the light go.


	5. Take Me Walking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I like apricot."
> 
> "'Cos you're a fuckin' pansy."

It was a mistake to think they could make breakfast at the same time. Noel knew it when he started. But surely, he reasoned with himself, two grown men--fucking middle aged men! -- could make eggs and toast without having a row. 

Mam’s oldest friend had come to see her, a woman named Doris who used to work at the chippy next to Mam’s bakery. She was as round and outgoing as his mother was soft and deliberate, and Noel had always liked her. Mam was feeling pretty awake and he sat listening absently to their birdlike chatter, thinking it all was going rather well until Doris begin to ask a question and his mother’s eyes slid toward him with a warning look, and Doris self-consciously closed her mouth again. He’d realized with a shock that they wanted to talk grownup talk away from the children--and that at fifty four he was still the fucking children. He’d darted from the room with an excuse of making breakfast, which was how he came to be dancing around the fucking toaster with Liam, telling himself that surely, surely they could do this, while Liam bumped Noel’s elbows and got butter all over the worktop.

Noel looked in the cupboard, and looked again.

“What’s happened to the apricot jam?” he asked. “It was right here earlier.”

“I binned it,” said Liam, all offhand-like.

“What? Why?”

“ ‘Cos apricot’s for pansies.”

“I like apricot,” Noel said.

“‘Cos you’re a fuckin’ pansy,” Liam explained.

“And you’re a twat! What a fucking dick, man--”

What are you on about, apricot jam?” Liam asked. “Apricots? Apricots?” He made a posh sniffy face. “Na, give me raspberry. Now that’s a jam for a man.” He rolled the r in raspberry as if it tasted good, and gave his jam jar a little fist bump.

“Jam for a man? What does that even mean?” Noel cried. 

“Jam never said owt to you so shut up, _y’cunt._ You sound like a granny.”

“And you sound like a prick, binning people’s jam. It’s Mam’s! Why would you throw away stuff she likes?”

“She doesn’t,” Liam said. 

“She does.”

“She _doesn’t._ ”

“She fucking well does.”

 _“Noel.”_ Liam opened a lower cupboard door and pointed. Inside were a dozen or more little jars of apricot jam, all unopened. “She _doesn’t. You_ like it. You send it with your posh fuckin' groceries and never think about what she likes, and there it sits.” He picked up the single jar of raspberry jam, the only one in the house, and dangled it, half empty, between their eyes.

“All right. I’ll change the order,” Noel said--pretty fucking graciously, he thought. “But don’t you fucking touch my apricot jam.”

“Fine.” 

“Fine.”

Liam snatched up his plate of toast and slammed the kitchen door on his way through to the living room. Noel slammed his louder on the way out the back door.

Liam began humming as soon as he had left the kitchen.

“Where did Noel go?” his mother asked.

“Got ‘is knickers in a twist and went out for some air," said Liam. “Sends his love, says he’ll be back soon. Hey’yare, Doris. You’re looking lovely!” He dropped a kiss on both their foreheads. “Can y’eat some toast, Mam?” He held her up a bit of raspberry toast and sat back to listen to the ladies talk. It was good to have Noel back and things normal again. Christ, he had missed that cranky geezer.

Noel walked down the gray street fuming. Fuck Liam. It never ended. The tiniest little thing! Jam for a man! Apricots make a man fucking queer? Noel thought he ought to have queered Liam’s long nose and set that matter right straight. Liam never wanted to better himself, not for a minute. Still talking like a scally, practically still in a fucking track suit, eating bangers with his fingers and putting vinegar on everything. Just the sight of him drove Noel insane with irritation. Impulsive, unrealistic, avaricious, impossible, terrifying--dealing with Liam on a daily basis was an exercise in managing one’s adrenaline response. Their life together might as well have been a war zone.

He passed through a narrow lane on his way to Stockport Road. He remembered being cornered here once by the sort of lowlifes Liam spent his life running after, or from, in a violent game of tag. But of course, they both been the same kind of lowlife back then.

It was just him and Liam coming through here on their way back from a show at the Free Trade Hall one night, walking because they had spent all their bus money drinking, when he found that a confusion of noise had collected behind them like a cloud--four lanky shadows high as fuck and out for Liam’s blood, apparently because he had been debauching their sisters. For fuck’s sake. Noel thought they sounded like a pack of dogs, both silly and frightening, and somehow many more than they ought to have been. Soon their howling resolved into shouted insults.

“And you stay away from my sister Brenda, you hear me?” one of them cried.

“Ay, but can you keep her away from me?” crowed Liam, with a rude gesture at the front of his keks.

“Jesus, Liam,” Noel muttered. It was true enough. With his gigantic smoke-lashed eyes, with his huge bright smile and all, Liam never had to chase the girls. They came to him. But still there was things to say to brothers and things to fucking shut up about.

“Say it again?” the boy said. “Say it again, cabbage? I can’t understand you, mushmouth. Are you a fuckin’ Mongoloid? Can you even read?”

Liam fell suddenly sheepish and silent, awkwardly rubbing his nose. Noel swore as he saw the shy hurried blink behind his hand. Liam _couldn’t_ read very well and that was God’s own truth, but most people didn’t know it. Noel shouldered his way to within an inch of the strange boy’s nose.

“Fuck. Right. Off,” he said through gritted teeth, “And don’t ever speak to him again.” He was shorter than all four of them, but he had seen a good deal more of the dirty end of the world and they could tell.

“What’s it to you?” the boy said sulkily. “None o’fuckin yours.”

“My brother, my business,” Noel spat. “And I’ll have you for a fuckin’ rug if you ever lay a finger on him. Now fuck off.”

And they did. Noel leaned on Liam in sheer relief.

“Would you really have fought all of ‘em?” Liam asked.

“Well, I can but I’d rather not, d’y’ know what I mean? Or have even numbers, or be prepared, or--or something. Christ, Liam, can’t you pick a sket who doesn’t have a gang banger for a brother?”

“I can pick me own girls and I’ll fight for myself. I don’t need you.”

“The hell you don’t! You’d have gotten your head kicked in just now.”

“Fuck off.” Liam shoved him away and disappeared into the darkness.

A week or so later Noel was back on the road hauling gear for the Carpets. A week or so after that his mother left a message at the hotel desk saying that Liam was in hospital, struck down by a bunch of boys who took a hammer to his head while out with his mates one night. “Brenda,” he had said, the one they never got a good look at, and whacked Liam on the nog and ran off laughing, leaving him in a pool of blood in the street.

By the time Noel got back several months later Liam was out of hospital but not really better. If anything he was ten times worse--more reckless, more impulsive, more moody. Worse even still, he had discovered cocaine.

“Don’t you dare come home like that,” Noel had hissed in his ear the first time he’d seen him high on the street with friends. And Liam did seem able to control himself around their mother, or at least make it into his room and back out again without being seen. But out of her sight all bets were off. Liam was as voracious for drugs as he was for every other gratification. 

It was at a Carpets gig that Noel first learned to be terrified of that headlong thirst for pleasure. He was working as a roadie and Liam was around somewhere in the background, as he often was. Noel was keeping guitars tuned and out of the string-warping lights when his eye fell on Billy Bly, a floor man with a good gig of selling drugs to kids on the side. He was at the end of the bar in a dark spot between two yellow lights, and he was talking to Liam.

Noel was off his head himself of course, as he had been for most of the past several years, but this was different. Liam, just eighteen, with his wide euphoric eyes and soft curious mouth was--quite, quite different. For one, Noel worked for his money and therefore knew how to pace himself. Liam spent or used anything that came into his hands immediately and Noel knew for a fact that his pockets were empty, so why was he talking to Billy Bly? Noel forgot about the guitars and moved closer.

Liam stood exactly in the pool of golden light, leaning forward confidentially on his elbows. Bill asked a question. Liam’s mouth formed a crooked little smile. His lashes swept down and he bit his lip in an expression that was probably unconscious--Noel had to believe it was--but nevertheless unmistakable. Fetching. A speculative look came over Bill Bly’s face. Noel was across the room before he had another single thought.

His hand fell on Liam’s collar. “Go to the loo. _Now_ ,” he said, and propelled him in that direction. “So help me, if you lay a fucking hand on him--” he said to Bill. The big man just laughed.

Noel burst into the filthy restroom radiant with anger, which escalated straight into outright fury at Liam’s sulky expression.

“Listen to me. Do not, and I mean _do not_ fuck around with trying to wheedle free drugs out of Bill Bly or anyone like him. Do you understand?”

“No, I fucking don’t. I have no idea what you’re on about.”

“I mean you have to pay for your drugs, or it will come out of your arse in the end. Don’t do it. Fuck. Here.” Noel put a baggie from his coat pocket into Liam’s hand. “And if you’re short on drugs come to me. Nobody but me, do you understand?”

“That’s fuckin’ rich. You’re never around! What about when you’re moving shit around fuckin’ Germany, tagging around after those Oldham twats?”

“I don’t know,” said Noel hopelessly. “Get a job and work for it, like the rest of us do. Just remember, if someone tells you something's free, they’re lying.”

But not too long after that they had their own band, their own roadies, their own money and drugs, and people were giving them everything, it seemed, for free. After that all bets really were off. At least, Noel figured, they were always together and he knew what Liam was up to, even if he was in no better state himself. He didn’t remember much of the next several years, but he thought they must have been all right because if they weren’t, Liam would have said.

Noel had slowed down by the time he reached Stockport Road and found himself gawking in the embittered shop windows, forgetting exactly what he had been so upset about. It was amazing how this town never changed. He heard that it had, that there were neighborhoods full of hipster twats in handlebar mustaches closer to downtown, but he didn’t believe it. This was Manchester: the chippy, the Tesco where Mam used to send him with grocery money, the Cash Converters with its broken diamond hopes lined up on velvet trays, the windows stuffed with bicycles, televisions, and the sort of crap guitars that people bought their kids for Christmas and got rid of by Easter. 

Well, but a guitar was a guitar, and he felt a little hitch in his breath when he saw them. Music fell somewhere between breathing and sex for Noel, and while his lungs plugged along just fine and his own left hand was never far away, he’d come north without a guitar. Of course. He’d come expecting a single night away, not to find himself living here again for the first time in years but in hiding, with his brother, watching their mother die by inches. 

No wonder he was so damn cranky, he thought, and looked carefully over the tangled little forest of headstocks growing in the window. His eye fell on a little Spanish guitar standing quietly among the knockoff Fenders and Ibanez crap. It gleamed pale blonde among the tobacco burst and whiskey-toned junk, and its curving cheek made him think of Anais when she was tiny. He ducked inside and put fifty quid on the counter, just daring the man to try and notice who he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is geographically correct, as much as the internet can make it. The Tesco and Cash Converters and the diamond rings are all there, a mile or two down Stockport Road, exactly where the boys would have passed them on their way downtown.
> 
> Whether Noel actually prefers apricot to raspberry I can't say, but I suspect he would because that's the sort of thing posh people would get up to, eating tofu with peels on their face.


	6. Discovery Park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Christ, I’m so happy I could die."
> 
> “I think I cracked a tooth.”

Noel came walking back hours later with two new songs in his pocket and the Spanish guitar swinging in its old-fashioned paper case. He paused at Discovery Park to watch a scrum of boys chasing a football. Or rather, to watch a mob of boys and one taller, gangly figure, because there was Liam, pelting down the pitch at the head of the pack, shouting and waving and making twice as much noise as any of them. Just then the ball came scooting toward him, ready for an open shot.

Noel put two fingers in his mouth and gave a long wolf whistle. Liam’s head whipped around to the sound, and in an instant his man had slipped the ball from his feet and sent him cartwheeling onto his back.

“Time! Time!” Liam shouted. He got up spitting grass and laughing, and ambled over to look Noel up and down. “Well, Mr. Gallagher. Tell us what you’ve been up to,” he said.

Noel blushed and held up the new guitar. It was a old joke on tour that Noel always looked like he’d just been shagging when he’d really been writing--and then sometimes like he’d been writing when really he’d been shagging--something Liam had been the first to notice and seldom shut up about. Noel had given up a long time ago. He couldn’t help it. Rosy, distracted, and carefree was just the way he looked sometimes when--when he was happy, and the truth was that he felt pretty great at the moment. Liam grinned.

“Good,” he said. “Now you’re here you can help out these lot. We’ve been playing lopsided.”

“What? No! No fuckin’ way. Besides, why are you even out here while I’m gone?”

“Mam and Doris said I had to go out ‘cos I was drivin’ them crazy, is what.”

“I’ll bet. But Doris will have left by now.”

“Paul’s come, wants his turn sleeping with Mam. Come on, cunt, game won’t wait.”

“You’re mad.”

“And you’re fuckin’ slow. Come on.”

So Noel went out and found a group of boys about fourteen years old, who had already sussed out Liam pretty well.

“No way, ‘e’s too big for us, an’ ‘e plays dirty.” said a gritty boy with snaggle teeth and a wall eye, when Noel said he played centre midfield. “Theyse smoking us even with an extra one on our side. You get up there.” 

“Well, his wind’s bad and I’m faster.” Noel said. “Now, he’s going to pay attention to nothin’ but me, he can’t help it. And I want you on my right, okay? It’s my strong side, his weak one. When we get down field, I want you out in front on my right, it’s coming to you to take the score so be ready. And we’re gonna keep him moving, fat sod. Don’t ever start smoking, lads, ‘cos short wind’s a bitch. Y’ready?”

And it worked--a bit. That is to say, the strategy worked fine, but it turned out that Liam had a positively Napoleonic gift for inspiring his side, and Noel found himself facing a grubby little army ready to die on Liam’s hill, who learned every dirty trick on the first go and used them without hesitation. What he lacked in wind he made up for in sheer balls and grit, and Noel couldn’t shake him.Things got bloody pretty quick. Noel thought he knew all the swear words there ever were, but he learned some new ones from Walleye and invented a couple of his own . By the time the streetlights came on and their new friends all began to scatter home, Noel was leaning on his knees, spitting blood on the grass and wondering if a good puke would make him feel any better.

Liam watched the boys disappearing in the dark. “Christ, I’m so happy I could die,” he said, and went to puke over the sideline.

“You’re a nut. Jesus, I think I cracked a tooth.”

“Feels good, doe’nnit?” Liam bent over to pick something out of the grass on his way back to Noel. “Ooo, fuckin’ ace. They’re still here. ” 

“Liam. You’re joking. You’re not gonna--”

“Wot.”

“Tell me you’re not gonna tell those kids about fuckin’ magic mushrooms.”

“I don’t need to tell ‘em, man. They’ve got older brothers an’ all, they know already. See?” He pointed, and sure enough the last little scrapper was bent over, stuffing his pockets. Liam brought over a little handful and held them out.

“Really.” said Noel. “Fuckin’ magic mushrooms. Are you eleven? We're eleven again, is that what’s going on?” 

“Don’t we wish,” said Liam, and folded a big one into his mouth, smiling.

A long while later they were both flat on their backs, squinting at the slowly appearing moon. Liam thought that it looked like a bangled dancer with veils on her hips, looking over her shoulder at them. “Coming, darlin’,” he murmured. It had been pretty dry out for a few days, and the ground felt comfortable, like cool kisses on his back. Noel didn’t think so though; he fussed around until his head rested on Liam’s stomach and tucked his hands into his sleeves. Liam lay very still as he settled himself there, and thought of how nice it would be if he could carry Noel around in his gut all the time, a fiery little cannonball that would never leave him. He liked the idea. The moon did too; she smiled over her shoulder at the thought. The ground seemed to breathe under them, and he put a hand down to steady Noel. 

“‘S’ okay,” he said. 

Noel grunted in comprehension. Noel always understood. Liam could see the outline of his head, the hair all standing upright with sweat and running. He looked like a spiky rumpled hedgehog down on Liam’s belly, blasted by wind and lit with stars. He was looking up at the moon, curious, as if waiting for her to speak.

“Remember how Bono used to get that bird out, all tarted up with the bangles and the scarves and all, and she’d dance for him, and he could never touch her?” he asked.

Liam smiled in the dark. “Yeah, man.”

Noel jutted his chin upward. “Johnny, take a walk with your sister the moon,” he said, like it explained everything. And really it did.

“I see the moon and the moon sees me,” said Liam. It was a rhyme their mother used to sing him at bedtime, back when he was so tiny that the big book was heavy for him to carry and he couldn’t read at all. He loved her quiet voice, and the spidery pen and ink drawings, and the way that Noel and Paul used to sit so quietly on the floor, pretending that they weren’t listening while she read.

“God bless the moon, and God bless me,” Noel said, finishing it.

“Noel.”

“Yeah.”

“I missed this. I missed this--so fuckin’ much.”

“Me too.” 

Seconds ticked by, so quietly. The wind and the moon and the ground were all so lovely, and they all seemed to be saying the same thing.

“Noel.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

Liam waited a long time to take his next breath, just in case that would be the one where Noel would get up and go. But the seconds drew out and Noel didn’t go, so at last he had to--a rough drawn-out shuddery breath which, he supposed, sounded pretty desperately uncool. But Noel didn't leave, not a bit. He hoisted himself onto his elbows and wriggled up to place little kisses on Liam’s temples, first the left and then the right, and then blew raspberries on them exactly as he had when--too far back to remember when, but Liam knew that it had been real.

“I love you too,” Noel said. “Bastard. Love you more than anything. 'Scept Mam. Love you like mad. Cunt.” He laid his head down on Liam’s shoulder, humming a little tune, getting sleepy. Liam laid his fingers very gently on Noel’s sleepy hedgehog hair. It was softer than it looked, all smoke and bitter and cream, and Noel didn’t move away. He tapped Liam’s chest in time to his little song, _na-na-na._ Liam tucked him into his shoulder and wrapped both arms around him, and wished that they could both remember this in the morning.


	7. In the Morning We Don't Know What to Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Shut up, I didn’t want your gravy.”
> 
> “You _loved_ my gravy. You want to make love to my gravy all night long. Ouch!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found this chapter the most difficult to write by far. Feedback is very welcome!

“I said, budge over.” Noel repeated himself for a second time that morning.

“Hm?” Liam said absently.

“You’re in the way.”

Noel reached across him to get the butter and wondered exactly what Liam was looking so starry about this morning. He was pretty sure they had gone to sleep in the park and been shooed off home when a cop took them for a couple of horny kids. He remembered seeing a dark haired girl in the moon tarted up in silver scarves, with the most incredible shreds of diamonds falling from her shoulders, telling him _Love, love_ but not much else. Perhaps Liam had gone back out again, down to the pubs? But no, the women he’d meet there weren’t the kind to make him look like that, all dreamy and satisfied.

“What are you on about?” Noel asked suspiciously.

“Mmm?” Liam looked up from the little dance he was doing over the jam pot.

“You. Being all moony and shit.”

Liam actually blushed, all rose and pearl under his stubble. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just--happy.”

“Well, quit. You’re putting me off my beans and toast.”

Liam nodded and rubbed his chin--and his eyes widened as though he had remembered some exciting surprise.

“Jesus, I’m out,” Noel said. “I’m gonna eat with Mam.”

Their mother was awake when he brought her breakfast. She ate less and less every day, and Noel was beginning to feel grateful that she took cream in her tea just so she got some calories in. She usually drank it when offered, so they offered it about a billion times a day--though she had to take it in a covered cup with a straw now, her hands too unsteady to use a regular mug. Just yesterday he’d seen Joan quietly commandeer a spoon to help her manage lunch--and hastily went to the toilet to scrub his eyes, as if they burned.

She seemed to find eating exhausting. Beans and toast were so tiring that she only swallowed a few bites before beginning to drift off. Noel set aside the plate and and began to work on a tune he’d started the day before, ignoring Liam as he passed through the room.

He’d rarely played in his mother’s presence before now. When he was learning to play as a teenager he kept the music hidden in his room, doors shut, resenting Liam’s presence in the room they shared. Later on he had a lightening strike in which he realized that men would envy him and seek his approval, that girls would watch him, follow him into dark corners and get all handsy, that people would give him fucking _money_ just for playing guitar--but Mam and home were never part of that. Like the records he played through puffy headphones, sprawled out on his bed, it was secret.

But he could see that she liked it, even while she was sleeping. So he played.

He had a good hook for a new tune, and a good riff, but nothing after. It just sort of petered out. He played the riff and two good lines of lyric over and over, humming, trying to find out where it went. He wodged his knees to the side to let Liam through again--but Liam paused and just stood there, watching.

Noel looked up. Liam had, he saw, given himself an absolutely sparkling shave and put on a navy jumper that made him look made of ivory. He stood with his head on one side, listening.

“Good tone on that,” he said, nodding at the guitar.

“It better have, it cost a bomb,” Noel said. “Strings are rubbish though.”

Liam eyed its pale curves. “Looks like Lennon when he was little,” he said thoughtfully.

Noel nodded. Lennon and Anais were cousins, after all, and had the same delicate baby cheeks when they were little. He remembered how they used to play together, back in the beginning. Mad with excitement to spend a day with dad, both of them. He and Liam used to get them on the same day and take them out to the zoo, flying kites, driving bumper cars or walking the dogs, whatever you could do to bond with a child you didn’t live with. He wondered if Anais missed her cousin when he suddenly disappeared from her childhood, and what Lennon remembered of him. He wondered what Lennon was like now, all grown up. He’d seen pictures on the internet; a good-looking boy, though too girlish to be as handsome as Liam was at that age, he thought.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked, curious despite himself, when Liam began to move toward the kitchen.

“Match is on tonight, so I thought I’d make up the roast.”

“What??”

“Roast. Cooking. Me.” Liam spoke slowly, as if Noel were simple.

“You’re making tea?”

“Yeah. Mam showed me ages ago how she used to do the Sunday roast. Mine’s not as good as hers, but it won’t kill anybody,” he said. “Funny what you can do when you’re not coked out of your head,” he added.

“You want me to believe you’re making a Sunday roast.”

“Can you say anything that’s not a question? I said I am, didn’t I. You must think I’m an idiot.”

“Nnooo,” Noel said.

“It’s all right, man, I know you do.” Liam seemed to have genuinely ceased to care in those three seconds. “Call Paul and tell him to be here at five? Or I’ll knock his head off.”

Noel made the call and resumed his song for about thirty seconds, but it had turned to shit. He pulled out his phone and began building a gigantic playlist. American standards, film scores from Sean O’Riada, the sort of pap he remembered hearing on the Gay Byrne Hour when he was tiny, records they used to play before Da smashed the record player--Vicki Carr, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis--some of the punk music Mam might have heard coming out of his room when he was a teenager, but only the rough and mournful ballads, some of his own solo work and some of Liam’s, his acoustic sessions with Gem because he'd always secretly suspected his mother might have a crush on him...every damn thing he could think of that might tie her to this present life. He plugged it into the big stereo, which was one of the first things he and Liam had bought for her when they first began to have real money. He texted Cecile.

“Send a lava lamp. Get it here by 5?”

She replied in seconds. “Uh. Like the seventies?”

“A big one,” he replied. “Red.”

“Done.”

Then he banged out the rest of his tune in twenty minutes. It was easy. It was good. Really good. He finished scrawling the last of the lyrics in his notebook and tuned into what was going on in the kitchen. There was the thunk and clink of tea going, and there was Liam, singing the chorus to Noel’s new song. He knew the words already.

Christ. He was a difficult bastard but he had a gift, no denying it. Noel remembered the first time he’d ever heard him sing.

Who would ever have thought that Liam--Liam!-- would be a singer in a band? Not Noel, not Mam, not any of his mates. At nineteen he seemed to be nothing but a walking bundle of drives to score girls, get high, and get into football scrums. Noel was pretty sure that none of his mates were bright enough to play an instrument even if they weren’t convinced that music was for queers, which they were. Noel had been a roadie for years now and while Liam came to all of the local gigs where he was working, he showed no interest in the music itself at all. Noel assumed that he came for the girls and drugs.

So he didn’t know what to expect when he walked into Liam’s gig with The Rain, late on purpose so he wouldn’t have to speak to anyone. And there stood his brother in the flat glare of a spotlight singing like--Noel didn’t know what. His voice was shockingly sweet, timbred like a choirboy gone a little dirty, raw and yearning. He stood absolutely still, hardly even blinking, and threw such ferocious concentration into the music that singing didn’t even seem the right word for it. He looked blind.

It was fucking astonishing, and more so the longer Noel looked. It had never occured to Noel once, not once, to play his own songs on a stage for money. Songs were what he did to sort his guts out, and he did it alone. Yet Liam obviously _was_ sorting his guts out, up there under the lights. His rage, his fear and longing, his brutal directionless physical energy, that strange luminosity that no one understood, least of all himself--it was all there, coming out of his gut as a monster of pure sound, and the only visible tell was a little squinch of his eyelids at the close of each line. It was a completely foreign being up on that stage, not his brother at all, and that voice--Noel had to have it. He didn’t even know what he meant by the thought, but he had to make that voice his own. He needed it.

The song ended. Liam’s eyes became instruments of seeing again and found him immediately, though he stood in the darkest part of the bar. His expression turned hopeful, defiant, soft. It took all Noel’s willpower, but he looked away without a sign. Two weeks later Liam asked him to to be in his band, with his pothead friends and their shitty, shitty drummer. He said yes.

They were sitting in the flat he shared with Louise--her flat, but still they shared it and some of the things were his. He was pretty fucking proud of it, and secretly loved to offer tea to a guest and remove a newspaper from a chair for them to sit. Not _his_ chair, of course, because that was his and part of the point.

He knew what Liam was going to say the moment he offered to come round to his for a match night--a match night on a Friday when Louise always had gallery duty--and he knew what he would reply. But he thought it easier for both of them later if they didn’t make it too easy. So he noodled away on his guitar, a little chorus forming, while he waited for Liam to respond to his counterdemand, his totally bananas condition that he "join" Liam’s band by becoming its dictator. The band would become his--and by extension, Liam. It took a long time, and he was singing his way through the newly forming chorus when Liam interrupted.

“How d’y do that?” he asked.

“Do what.”

“You sing like...like a man. You sound like a man when you sing.” Noel was silent, gobsmacked. “I don’t really like the sound of my voice,” Liam confessed. “I think I sound a bit like a girl.”

“You don’t sound like a girl.”

“Or gay. I sound pretty gay, I think.”

“You don’t sound gay.”

“A bit fucking gay,” Liam insisted.

“You don’t sound fucking gay.”

“Well, what do you call it then?.”

Noel was moving into the bridge now, and grimaced as he stumbled over a tricky part.

“I dunno. You sound... like I want you to sound.” There was a beat of silence.

“Okay. Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes you can be chief of my fuckin’ band.” Liam smiled one of his rare sudden smiles, and Noel was suddenly unsure which of them had won.

Now here he was singing to himself in the kitchen, not like a girl but...like a man who’s had his heart broken a time or two, arrogant, tender, and stubborn. Mad fucker, he was impossible. You wanted to both tuck him into bed and beat him on the head with a stick. Noel had been happy doing either one, depending on the day. 

The bell rang. Joanie, here for her morning with Mam. His mother’s face lit in the most extraordinary way when he led her in, and Noel wondered if she ever wished she’d had daughters. Joanie asked her how she did, and the whole conversation immediately devolved into a patois so intimately feminine that it was almost unintelligible. He left them to it.

*******************************************************************************************************

It was an incredible meal. Noel couldn’t bring himself to say it, but he figured the secret got out when he took a third plate because Liam’s face curled in a quiet, rosy smile. Their mother loved it too, remaining upright and eating ever so slowly, long after she was ordinarily asleep. Paul praised the food often enough for all of them. He wasn’t married and made do with pub food or his own sorry cooking, the poor bastard.

“That was lovely, Liam,” their mother said. Her plate was actually empty. Liam glowed and bent his head for her kiss. “The potatoes were excellent.”

“Noel did those,” Liam said. Their mother’s eyes turned toward him in surprise.

“I didn’t,” Noel said, embarrassed. “Liam did it all. I only bashed ‘em.”

“They were well bashed, love,” she told him.

Noel wondered if this might be his mother’s last meal. How would they know which one was, when it came? Would the last thing to pass her lips be a shake from a can? He decided it wasn’t happening and texted Cecile. _Avocados, yogurt, bananas. Berries, all sorts. Mango??? Also blender._ Mam dropped right off, somnolent and stuffed. They began to break up the little pool of TV tables they had built next to her bedside.

There was only one room for one good chair left in the living room, a problem that became apparent once they moved the room around to turn on the match, removing the giant lava lamp from where it had been burbling on top of the yellow-covered telly since morning. Paul was on a kitchen chair, because he always was. That left the easy chair for Noel, clearly. It was only Aston Villa but still, things were things. But he had hardly sat down when Liam landed on top of him, sitting in his fucking lap. He had forgotten that his brother weighed a thousand tons and was approximately seven feet tall

“What the fuck, Liam.”

“Budge over.”

“What? Get off me!”

“Ow, stop wriggling. That hurts!”

“I mean it to hurt, twat! Get out o’my fuckin’ chair!”

“I just made you a homemade fuckin’ Yorkshire pudding. And gravy! Give us some room.”

“Shut up, I didn’t want your gravy.”

“You _loved_ my gravy. You want to make love to my gravy all night long. Ouch!”

“I can’t see a fuckin’ thing--”

“Leave your brother alone, ” their mother said from her bed. She didn’t say which brother--in fact, she wasn’t even awake. Noel couldn't believe it. Her eye was on them even when dying, even asleep. They finally subsided, poking and laughing, with Liam’s arse lodged into one side of the easy chair and his long legs over Noel’s lap. The doorbell rang once more.

“Jesus, that woman makes things happen fast. Dunno how she does it.” Noel said. He clambered out to get the door and turned to point back at Liam in warning. “You’d better not take over the bottom of my chair.”

But there was no box of smoothie material at the door. The man on the step was scrawny, fading ginger, with a heavy belly hanging from his alcoholic ribs---and he looked back with Noel’s own face, ravaged by time and brutality.

Noel shut the door in his face and went straight through to the kitchen without speaking. As he'd expected, Liam appeared directly behind him.

“Get Paul,” he said. He placed two hands flat on the worktop and focused on quelling his nausea. 

“Tell me,” he said, when both of his brothers stood in the kitchen. “Tell me why our father is on the front step.”


	8. Our Broken Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Utter. Fucking. Cunt."
> 
> "I don't know what you're on about."

The kitchen is a noisy place, even when there’s nothing going on. There’s the refrigerator fan humming in B flat like it does, and the gurgling radiators that sound like the flushing of a toilet made for mice, the pop and hiss of the pilot light on the cooker--and just now, the muscular rise and fall of Noel breathing hard through his nose.

Why was their father at the door? Because he wanted to get his legs broke, obviously. Liam had promised to do it long ago if he ever came back. But why was he there now? Liam looked at Paul. He was a bigger man than him or Noel, and usually redfaced with confidence and booze. But his face was ashy gray.

“Utter. Fucking. _Cunt._ I can’t believe you,” Liam said.

“I don’t know what you’re on about.”

“You called our old fella and told him to come.”

“I didn’t tell him owt.”

“Then how is he here, Paul?”

“He lives here now, Liam, he’s been back for years. He lives round the corner, he sees her on the street--”

“And you let that happen? You let him speak to her? You’re all are like, mates now?”

“He’s the father of her kids,” Paul said defensively. “They were married almost twenty years. I thought they should have a chance to say goodbye.”

“You fucking thought. Did you ask?” Liam demanded. Noel was still leaning on the worktop, hands pressed white around the edges, just breathing. Christ. Liam had seen some shit but he had forgotten what this thing looked like. Now he remembered; nothing in the world scared him more than the sight of Noel paralysed by fear.

“I don’t see the problem,” Paul was saying. “It’s been ages. Everyone else has grown up and gotten over it, except you two. Youse never forgive and forget, not a fuckin’ thing.”

“Are you mental?” Liam asked. “We never forgave him because he’s not _sorry_. Forgive and forget! Did you forget--”

“I didn’t forget anything, and I don’t see that he was so bad, meself. He was a right cunt when he was in the drink, sure--”

“He was always in the drink--”

“But what man isn’t,” Paul continued, “and as far as I’m concerned we deserved as much as we got. And this one,” he pointed at Noel, “was beggin’ for it most of the time. He was pure gagging for Da to put a fist down his throat, and if I was his da I’d have done the same--”

Liam swung at Paul’s nose just once and went for his throat. Incredible how easy he went down. A flour balloon shaped like a man, spilling blood from his head onto Mam’s white floor. Liam concentrated on smashing his eyes out. There were new sounds in the kitchen’s quiet chatter now, grunts and smacks and the thunk of Paul’s skull on the floor, and they mixed with the other familiar noises until Noel pulled him off with a hand as strong as God and got up in his face close enough that Liam could see him--smelled him first, sandalwood, smoke, and lime on his skin--then see him through the blindness.

“He wasn’t there,” Noel was saying. “ _Liam._ He doesn’t remember because he wasn’t there.” 

Liam shook his head, trying to remember it all. He had been so little, though.

He remembered sitting at the kitchen table, watching Mam and Da talk. That’s what he thought it was, talking. He was after her, and she was making dinner. Her back was to the room, and he remembered how his bulk followed her like a shadow, how his hands hovered over her hips. He kept touching her, and she’d shimmy away, with a look over her shoulder at Liam. There was a red mark on her cheek like burn. Da’s voice would get louder, and hers would get softer until Liam could hardly hear the words, which were things like later and the boys are hungry and Ow, Tom-- Liam hadn’t been watching long, but it seemed like they had been at it a long time. 

He had come in from playing on the street and sat down in the kitchen, watching. It was like the late night grownup TV shows, the ones where Mam would tell him to go to bed when she caught him looking. But tea was almost ready and she didn’t tell him to go, so it was okay. He thought it was okay.

Noel came crashing in. He was fifteen and went crashing everywhere, always making a lot of noise even when he didn’t say anything. He was always saying something though, even when he wasn’t talking. Liam listened for Noel all the time, every minute of the day. Even if he wasn’t nearby, even if he was out with his mates doing their secret teenager things. Whatever he was doing, Liam wanted to be able to hear him. He felt better when Noel was close by.

His crash made Mam jump and turn around, and Liam saw for the first time there was a smear of blood under her nose. Noel’s face grew dark and hard. His eyes shifted to their da.

“When’s tea ready?” he said rudely. Noel never spoke to Mam that way.

“Watch the way you talk to your mother,” Da snapped.

“You watch the way you talk to my mother,” said Noel.

“I talk the way I want to your mother,” said Da. The way he said the words was smeary somehow, and his hands slid over her hips as she tried to come past with the plate of chicken. She jumped about a mile but said nothing, and her eyes darted back and forth between them.

“Why are you here?” Noel asked. “Come back just for tea? Doesn’t that sket down on Crompton Road feed you?” Mam and Da both made sounds--Mam like a startled bird, Da like a distant lorry. “Why don’t you go on down there, with her dyed hair and all?” Noel asked. “I saw you, you know, out with her and that fucking kid, pretending to be a good da and all. Do you give her money?”

The sound of the lorry was getting louder. Liam had seen them out too--his da and a strange lady and a little girl with a clean dress and neatly brushed red hair. Liam didn’t know if she was his sister or not. But he saw the way Da walked beside her mam, polite and proud.

“Does she know you have kids? And a wife?” Noel was asking.

“What, this frigid hag and you lot?” Da said. Liam couldn’t hear Mam’s little fallen-bird noises anymore, ‘cos Da was like a lorry roaring closer. “I don’t call that a family. I don’t call it nothing to pay attention to. Why would a man hang around for that?”

“Go on then.” Noel said. He watched. “Well. Why aren’t you going? Can’t? I’ll bet she’s got another cunt in there. Bet she brings ‘em in one after the other when you’re not there--”

Da’s fist lashed out and Noel went crashing. He always crashed. There was a shriek from Mam and little bird sounds again, but this time Liam thought they must have been from him because the birds seemed to be right inside his head. There was blood on Noel’s face and shirt, dripping spat spat spat spat. His face twisted into a smile that wasn’t happy. A twisted face, like when he found shit on his shoes.

“Try the pubs then,” he said. A little flick of paper tapped Da’s chest and fell to the floor. A five pound note. 

The lorry crashed then, all fists and rocks and noise, and Noel went smashing against the wall. Then there was quiet. Noel went up to their room without speaking. Da carried the potatoes to the table, and he and Mam talked about his bad leg while Liam tried to look like he had a clean shirt on and neatly brushed hair, and pushed aside the food that had his tears on it, fat and glossy like raindrops.

In the night Noel sat listening to his headphones. Sometimes he’d unplug them so Liam could hear too, and there would be The Jam, the Smiths, or whoevers, but always the Beatles, which was the best ones. Whenever the headphone jack came out he’d listen to whatever Noel picked first, then beg for the Beatles. He liked the red one, and Noel liked the blue. Mostly they listened to the blue. 

But tonight the headphones were in and Liam could hear just the tiny-man voice saying _Lady Madonna, baby at your breast_. Noel sat on his bed with his headphones tied to the turntable, plunking away with his guitar. He wasn’t very good. But he sat with the big album jacket open and played the same phrase over and over and he looked happy, brow folded and mouth turned down in concentration.

Liam got _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ from under his pillow. He’d never read any book as good as this one. It had been Mam’s when she was little, and its dusty jacket showed a lion and two girls and long leafy branches like hands running in a circle together. 

He liked to think about who the people he knew would be if they lived in Narnia. Mam was Mrs Beaver of course, and Da was the Wolf, the captain of the Queen’s guards. Paul was a Bear. Noel was Edmund, for sure. Always telling Lucy she was young and wrong and silly, just like Noel. Wanted all the candy, wanted to have tea with the queen all by himself, no brothers around. But then Noel was also Peter a bit, too. Peter always knew what everyone should do. Probably if they were going to have a High King it ought to be Noel.

Liam wasn’t in the book but him and Lucy would be best mates if she was real, he knew it. She saw Aslan. If they were friends then she’d make a little _Oooo_ , all sorry and surprised when he came home with his head bashed in, and put a drop of her magic cordial on, and they’d go have a do with the fauns. And maybe when they were older they’d get married, and live in a pretty cave with nice chairs, and have sardines and toast for tea every day.

“You gonna read that? Or just lookin’?” Noel asked. He still had his headphones and guitar, but he was watching Liam stare at the cover. He had forgotten to even open the book because he was so busy watching Lucy and Susan and Aslan play tag.

“Reading,” he said. He could read now, it was just slow. He opened the book right in the middle to show how he could. 

But here was a little whuff of air on his back which meant the bedroom door opening. Opening on its own, when they always shut it? No. Da, being quiet.

The door shut. 

“Stand up and get ready for it, ye gobshite,” he said.

Noel pulled off his headphones off and stood. He looked little and bare in the blue Man City shorts he wore to bed.

“Do you know where your mother is right now?”

“No.”

Da picked up a book from the stack on Noel’s table. 

“In bed is where she is.” Bang went the book against the wall.

“Crying her eyes out, is where she is.” The next one hit Noel in the head. That didn’t make as much noise. 

“Crying ‘cos of you,” he said, and there went a mug filled with pencils. Noel dodged it. They weren’t allowed to dodge.

“And your big mouth--” a jar of stones from their trip to the sea, which exploded in a shower of clickets all over the floor.

“Fucking mental,” Noel shouted. “Stupid fat fucking cunt, it’s not me.” 

Oh no. No no no. They didn’t shout and they didn’t say that, it wasn’t allowed. 

“It’s you. You make her cry all the time, it’s always you--”

Liam didn’t know Da could move so fast. But just a little swiff of noise and there was Noel, with Da’s hand wrapped tight in his hair and his face shoved up against the looking glass that hung between their beds. Liam leapt away, over to the end of his bed. He could hear them breathing, he could smell Da’s sweat and anger. Noel twisted in his hands, and Da shoved an elbow in his back and pushed him hard against the glass. It was like a Noel eclipse, just a bit of his face showing behind Da’s shoulder and Da towering over, ready to swallow him up. 

“Think you’re a hard man, eh? Think you’re hard enough? Don’t fuck with me, lad. I’ll make ye wish you’d never been born. Ye wee fuckin’ poof.”

He twisted Noel’s hair again. They grew still. His hand, big and raw from the shovels and the concrete, was on Noel’s ribs. Slowly it made its way down Noel’s side. His fingers bent, squeezed, slid back to his waist. The sliding lifted Noel’s shirt so that a bit of skin showed. Da made a little noise like he thought of something nice. Noel began to wriggle and pull. 

“Aye, like that,” Da murmured. “I like it with a bit o’fight.” 

“Fuck, fuck, fucking piece of shit, fucking hate you cunt, cock-sucking--”

“That’s right,” said Da. 

Then it was all grunts and fists and furniture falling, and the flash of Noel’s dark hair, and the scared birds in Liam’s throat and Da’s face in the mirror--

Da froze. He had seen Liam in the glass, and Liam could see him. He was all red face and yellow teeth, mad in the eyes, and when he went still it was worse than smashing.

“Go downstairs,” he said.

“I’m reading,” Liam said.

“I said go downstairs.”

“I want to go to bed. I’m tired.”

“Liam, I said _Leave--_ ” He said Liam’s name, but it was Noel that his hands tightened on until they looked like teeth in his skin, and Noel’s head that he pulled back to make his white neck show, and Noel that he shoved against the wall and pressed with his whole body ‘til the breath went _hufff_ from his mouth. He grinned a terrible grin, and his teeth were like the teeth of the wolf captain.

“Liam.” It was Noel. He was panting and strained, but his voice was quiet. “Go turn on the telly. They put Clangers on at eleven. Just--please. Go watch cartoons.”

Liam went, but he didn’t turn on the telly. He huddled in the brown and yellow afghan and listened. It was worse not being in there. The muffled noises terrified him; the dull sound of fists, a slidey thunk that he thought must be Noel’s body against the plasterboard walls, a wordless, repetitive grunt from his father. A little sound of anguish from Noel so fleet he wasn’t sure it was real. His own heart beating in his belly, waiting for another one. And there it came--so small and hurt he couldn’t believe it was Noel, but it was. A long silence. And then--Liam’s heart leaped and fell--his father’s feet on the stairs, heavy and slow.

Liam hid in the shadowy sofa, trying to silence his sobby breath. Da went out without turning on a light, and the door closed like slow thunder. It still early. He could go down to the pubs, or to his sket on Crompton Street. He could be gone for hours yet. Liam raced up the stairs, terrified by his own spindly shadow.

Noel lay propped against the headboard with a t-shirt pressed to his face, knees splayed out under the cover. He looked like a broken doll, drained of every drop. He didn’t open his eyes when Liam entered. Liam sat on his own bed and watched. 

“Quit fuckin’ staring.”

Liam pretended to look at the light on the ceiling, which had gone all wobbly, and waited. Noel’s breath was high and fast, and Liam could only hear the out breaths going pant, pant, pant. His fingers looked like they were sleeping, so still on the white shirt, and his knees didn’t stir under the cover. At last he began to pull the shirt from his face. Gobs of blood, all clotted on a white shirt. And beneath it a cut that ran from his cheekbone down to his jaw, raw and open, red lines running down from its mouth. It made caterpillars crawl in Liam’s stomach. And now he saw what he hadn’t before. The looking glass was split from top to bottom and a net of glass had broken out. Bits of light, spattered on the floor! 

“Liam. Get me the medical kit from downstairs,” Noel said quietly. “I need to tape this.”

“I think it’s too big for tape. I think it needs stitches. Mam--”

“I’m not going for fucking stitches. Get me the tape.”

“I think you need to go to the hospit--”

“I can’t go to the hospital ‘cos I can’t get up, okay? Get me the medical tape.”

Liam raced downstairs and back up with the medical kit. Their house had become dark hole of anger, and their room was a pool of light when he burst back in. He shut the door tight to close them in. It took a long time for the bleeding to stop, and then longer to sponge away the blood so the tape would stick.

Noel touched his face with gentle fingers, hissing. 

“Okay. Fuck. I’m gonna put the edges together, and you’re gonna tape it shut.”

“I don’t think I can--”

“You fuckin’ well can. Grow up.”

The tape was stiff and hard, and he had to use the tiny silver scissors whose handles always wanted to put in his mouth. They snicked the webby tape without trouble, and at last he had five little pieces stuck like tags to the night stand. Noel made room for him to sit on the bed. He smelled like blood and rage, and a bitter smell that Liam didn’t know. It was hard for him to hold his face closed and make room for Liam’s fingers to put the tape.

“Okay, now. Fuck. Fuckin’ _OW._ No don’t stop cunt, fuckin' _do_ it--”

The pieces went on crooked because Liam’s hands were shaky, but at last the red line was stuck together with white crossbars, no edges gaping between and and no blood coming. Noel closed his eyes and let his head fall back. Liam waited.

“I need a hot flannel,” Noel said without opening his eyes. “With soap.”

Liam looked around, wondering.

“Please.”

Liam ran again and brought a blistery hot flannel that made Noel gasp when he took it. He began to shift under the blanket. Then he stopped, and looked at Liam warily.

“Go get me some ice.”

“There isn’t any ice.”

“Just get me something cold, okay? And give me a fuckin’ minute.”

Liam poked in the freezer as long as he could and brought back a bag of peas. Noel sighed as he pressed it to his face, and scooted down a bit in the bed. He looked like he was alone. Liam wondered if he was. Noel saw everything. If Noel didn’t see him, was he still real? How would he know?

He shut off the light and crawled into Noel’s bed. Noel let him under the cover but when he started to cuddle close--

“Don’t fuckin’ touch me,” he said.

Liam scooted to the edge of the bed, down deep under the covers, and listened to Noel breathe. Ages and ages of Noel breathing perfect, going in and out just like he should.

“He’s gone?” Noel asked.

“Yeah.”

His hand dropped onto Liam’s hair, so light it felt like air. Liam wriggled.

“Be still.”

“Harder, then. It tickles like that.” 

Noel made a little huff like a laugh and dug his fingers into Liam’s scalp. That was right. Liam sighed in pleasure, and Noel kept right on breathing all night.

Liam opened his eyes, and Noel’s face was bleak as stones.

“What’ll we do?” he asked.

“We have to ask her.”

“We’re not fuckin’ asking her.”

“A few days is all she has left, Liam. We have to ask.”

They looked at each other. Noel had the saddest eyes in the world.

“I’ll do it, then.”

“No. She wouldn’t say yes to you even if it was what she wanted. But she will to me.”

She would. And then what would they do?

Paul was still there. Nobody helped him. He put a cold cloth on his own eye, wiped up his own blood. When he was ready they went in to Mam together. The match was still playing on mute, maroon and blue men zooming around like nothing was wrong. Liam looked at the little artificial heart Noel had made and hoped it was enough.

Noel touched her hand. It was hard to wake her these days, and slow. She looked from one face to the other at first, wondering. Noel waited until she was awake enough to understand, and then still a bit longer. He took a breath slowly twice, three times. He turned to look at Liam, a caged bird beating in his eyes. Liam nodded.

“Da’s here to visit you,” Noel said, all easy and natural like they all had been saying his name for the past thirty years. God, he was amazing. Nobody in the world had balls like Noel. “He wants to--to pay his respects. D'y think you'd like to see him?”

It wasn’t right for them to ask her. She was old, she was sick, she didn’t understand. Liam could see her trying to guess what they wanted her to say. But then her eyes cleared and she was his own mam again, sweet and hard as almond rock.

“Your da,” she said slowly, “is more than a bad man. For years I tried to get out, and he always pulled us back. Sometimes I thought God and the devil both wanted us to die at his hand. This house...it saved us all. I waited years for it, and on the day we moved I swore I’d never leave. It’s my own. I kept for you as much as me. That man has never stepped through my door, and he never will. And if you think that I’m going to open it to that son of hell now--” she looked directly at Paul. “Well, I think maybe ye never knew me at all. Now go tell that bastard from me, that he can burn in hell.” 

Paul went. Noel turned the telly up, and Liam got the first round of lager from the fridge. Noel was in the big chair when Liam came back loaded with bottles. He put out his hand. Liam slid in, arse to the side and knees over. They faffed about arms and shoulders until they settled with Noel’s arm close around him and the crisps on Liam’s lap. Mam was asleep by then, so they ate crisps and slagged off Jack Grealish without mercy and made Paul make all the trips to the kitchen. Revolver played in the background, and their heart kept beating.


	9. The Good Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If I weren't your brother, your whole brother, I don't know who I'd be."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read only one thing in your entire life about Liam Gallagher, make it this. I've stolen from it a wee bit, because I mean, darling. https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/liam-gallagher-interview

It was near dawn when Noel decided that he couldn’t delay waking Liam any longer and crept upstairs to the room they shared as children. He looked comically big sprawled in the twin-sized bed, with a bar of light slanting across his back from the open door. He lay face downward like he used to when he was little, fist tucked under his cheek and one long leg hanging over the edge. Liam slept, like he did everything, with total commitment. Noel knelt beside him.

“Liam. Wake up.”

His eyes opened immediately. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“I need you to come downstairs.”

They went together, strangely, two grown men barefoot in the dark, walking cautiously as if over secrets, or toward disaster. Liam’s hand found his shoulder on the way down, hot and reassuring. Noel touched it briefly.

“You okay?” Liam whispered. 

“Yeah. Just--”

They could hear it even before they opened the passage door, sounds that Noel had listened to alone all night. Their mother seemed mostly unconscious but restless, and she--

“Shit,” Liam said. 

He sat right down on her bed and picked up her hand. He never did shy away from blood or tears or any of the things that made Noel cramp with anxiety, and it made Noel breathe easier just to see his big hand around her fingers. Liam looked at him questioningly.

“How long ‘as she been like this?”

“Getting worse all night, but slowly. Then bad really fast in the last half hour.”

Liam’s thumb found its way to their mother’s wrist.

“Fuckin’ hell.”

“I know.”

Mam tossed and kicked her blankets. “It’s hot. I’m too hot,” she complained. “Open the window. I can’t get the window open.”

They looked at each other. 

“She’s freezing, Noel. Her hands are blue, did you see?”

“Yeah. Mam, listen, I’m sorry we can’t open the window, it’s still winter outside. Maybe can we get you--”

“I said I want the window open. Mother! Mother, they won’t let me open the window, I’m hot---”

“Jesus. Did you call the doctor?”

“No. I just--I wanted to wait until morning, I didn’t want to bother him. I wanted to ask you--”

“Noel? Call him.”

Noel declined to think about why he was so relieved to hear an order from his brother and took his phone from the shelf where it had been murmuring sentimental tunes from The Bachelors all night into the kitchen. He had a moment of terror that he had somehow deleted the doctor’s personal number, but it was there. He picked up after just two rings, sounding rough with sleep but alert, thank god.

“This is Dr George Gregson.”

“Hi. Uh. I’m sorry to call you at this hour. This is Noel Gallagher, here with my mother Peggy--”

“I know, lad. Tell me what’s on.”

“She’s--I don’t know how to say it. Really bad. She seems confused.”

“Rapid pulse, blue extremities? Fever? Very short of breath?”

“Yeah, all that.”

“Is she coughing pink stuff?”

“Uh, no, I haven’t seen her cough anything up.”

“She is too coughing shit up,” Liam contradicted from the living room, panicky over the sudden sound of Mam’s wet hacking. “Fuck, Noel, it’s pink! Is she bleeding?”

“I’ll be right over,” said the doctor, and clicked off the line.

There was a pool of yellow light from the lamp near Mam’s bed. It spilled over her blankets and formed a circle on the dark floor. Liam paced into it and out again, like a caged animal. He was still barefoot from bed, and the sound of his quiet feet heightened the habitual impression he gave of a beast who thought things might get better if he just hurried up and ate somebody. Noel ignored it and focused on the doctor’s words. 

Dr Gregson had come by every day or two since their arrival. Noel was grateful that he took so much time to explain things, but there was a lot of unfamiliar medical crap and he ended up taking loads of notes, guessing wildly at spellings and muddling through looking it all up later on. So he sat with his notepad and let Liam pace.

“Your mam is in acute decompensated heart failure,” the doctor explained. “Most of the time she compensates pretty well for the condition of her heart, and the downward slide is pretty slow. Sometimes she can’t compensate so well anymore--and it looks like this. We don’t know why it can change so quickly. It may have to do with her thyroid condition.” 

Liam stopped. Noel looked at him. Neither of them knew she had a thyroid condition. She never said, and neither of them really understood what all the drugs they gave her were for. Was it the same as Liam’s? How long had it been going on?

“I don’t want to change her medication for that, because it will change how she feels too much and we can’t predict how much worse she’d feel without it. I want to keep her as stable as possible.” The doctor looked to make sure Noel was getting it all in his notes and went on. “I’m increasing her Apresoline--it relaxes her heart so more blood can get through, you know. I’m giving her nitroglycerin in a patch, so she doesn’t have to swallow so many pills. We’re going to double up her water pills to get this fluid around her lungs down, but you’re going to have to watch carefully to make sure she drinks enough. I’m prescribing an Albuterol nebulizer, just like if she had asthma, to open up her lungs. 

“And--” the doctor paused and looked at him-- “I want to give her a prescription for morphine instead of Percocet. She’s in a lot of pain. That’s what all this tossing and turning is about. The confusion won’t go away, she’s going to get even foggier but...I’d like her to be comfortable.” 

Noel put down his pen. “Sedated, you mean.”

“Well. Yes.”

“Would she still be herself? Would she be able to talk to us?”

“It depends. While she’s in this acute phase, it’s going to be much easier for her if she isn’t feeling afraid. What she’s experiencing right now--her lungs are full of fluid, with more of it in the cavity around them. She can’t breathe.”

“Like she’s drowning.”

The doctor nodded. “I’d like her to be pretty heavily sedated for now. Later on we may be able to lighten the dose. For a while.” 

Liam moved back into the circle of light. Noel looked up at him.

“It’s better this way, yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I mean, drugging out our mam? But we can’t watch her like this--”

“I said do it. What else are we gonna do, give her Paracetamol and good wishes?” Liam said roughly. He turned to the doctor. “What’s going to happen? Is this the end of it?”

Dr. Gregson seemed to think carefully about his next words. “I don't think so. She's made it through night, and her sleep is looking more natural just since I've got here. It’s not uncommon for patients to crash like this and then stabilize, and enjoy a period of being alert and relatively pain free. Sometimes it happens several times. We don’t really know.”

Noel looked at his brother. The room seemed to spin slowly around them. God, he was so tired. Strange, he thought hazily, how even when Liam was perfectly still you could see that caged animal in his eyes.

Dr Gregson seemed to understand Liam’s desperate need to move. “You’ve got a Tesco down the road a bit,” he told him.

“Yeah?”

“The pharmacy opens at six. The fastest way to get this stuff to your mam is to carry the prescription slips down there and hand ‘em over directly, rather than me going back to the office to submit them.”

“Give ‘em here.”

Liam was out the door almost before he got his shoes on. Noel and Dr Gregson were left in a room which felt suddenly deserted, as if neither of them were really quite there. The windows were still black, even though it must be nearly day. Emptiness hung in the air, in the watery sounds that came from his mother’s chest. They had piled blankets on her while waiting for the doctor and perhaps he only imagined it, but she seemed to be a little more at rest.

“Thank you for coming,” Noel said. “Can I...would you like some tea?”

“Aye. I would, so.”

Noel was grateful for the homely sounds of the kitchen, the purring of the electric kettle and the buzzing fluorescent lights. It made his childhood in this house seem so close that he could almost forget everything that lay in between then and now, all that had happened before they’d come here. Last evening seemed a million miles away already. He was wrung out, hung over, and exhausted. But despite--despite everything, he was glad to be swimming here in this soup of memory and confusion, with Mam and Liam, and not in the dreamworld that was his ordinary life.

He came back through the door with two mugs of tea and stopped short. Dr Gregson sat with his head thrown down on Mam’s covers, shoulders hunched and heaving, and his hand closed around hers like a lover. He looked up at Noel’s approach, showing a face so stark with grief that Noel understood like a thundercrack why this old man came to see their mam every day, why he gave them his personal mobile number, why he left his house to tend her in the middle of the night, and that it had exactly fuck-all to do with the NHS. 

He wheeled out of the room, giving them their privacy. 

There were dishes in the sink, and he nearly broke a few of them trying to busy himself enough to stop from hearing whatever might be going on in the next room. What exactly was he afraid might be going on between a dying woman and an octogenarian? He didn’t know what he was afraid of. Didn’t want to know, didn’t want to think about not wanting to know. All he could see was a man looking at the death of the woman he loved--and the woman was his mother.

The kitchen door opened. Dr Gregson entered, but it wasn’t really Dr Gregson anymore. It was a weary, self-conscious, heart-wrung man making no effort to hide what had just passed.

“Will you have a smoke in the garden with me?” he asked. Noel handed him a mug of tea without speaking, and together they went out into the dewy morning fog.

There was a little bench by the flowerbeds, where Mam liked to watch for butterflies in warm weather. They sat together and Noel watched him take out a package of loose tobacco, like he hadn’t seen anyone use in years. His fingers were tidy--of course they were, Noel thought, physician’s hands--and lost no brown stuff in the grass as he rolled two neat cigarettes.

“I feel like I owe you an explanation,” he began.

“I don’t think you need to--”

“It’ll be easier if I do,” said the doctor. “You’ll need me for a few days yet. I want you to be able to look me in the eye.” Noel fell silent and waited. What could he say, anyway? Dr Gregson struck a match and held it out. A tiny flame rose between them, then Noel’s cigarette made a plume and coal in the darkness.

“I met your mam when Paul was a baby,” the doctor began. “I was finishing my residency in general practice and was doing a stint in the urgent care room when she came in for stitches. Well, it wasn’t hard to guess what was going on. Young woman alone with a new baby in a strange country, and a set of stairs that had it out for her? I’ve seen such things a lot since then, but she was the first. Well, we got on, and when I decided to stay on in Manchester she became one of the first patients in my practice. I saw her three times for non-routine injuries that year. Broken nose, sprain, black eye. I was Paul’s doctor as well, and looked after your mam while she was carrying you, so I saw a lot of her. I delivered you, did you know?”

“No.”

“I never met your da. Delivered two babies for your mam, treated her for more acute injuries than I can count, and I never laid eyes on him. I didn’t need to.” His voice grew thick with disgust. “But I saw your mam every few months. Patched her up and sent her back to him, every time. She was….Your mam has a mighty heart, Noel.”

“I know,” Noel said quietly.

“You probably don’t. But if you think you do, I’m glad. She could laugh at anything. Proud as Solomon, and she wouldn’t be felt sorry for. One time a nurse tried to get into her confidence, and I’ll swear she made that woman believe that she wanted her black eye. I never knew anyone so fierce and so sweet as your mam. And she loved you lads like mad.” He paused to think. “She seemed to have a couple of good years when you were a baby, because I didn’t see much of her aside from your regular checkups. Do you know, you were the most affectionate baby I’ve ever seen.”

Noel found that his throat ached. “No,” he said.

“You were so in love with your mam, and she was with you. I remember trying to get your weight and height and that when you were nine months or so, and I couldn’t get the two of you to sit still for anything. You’d grab her by the ears and rub your mucky open-mouth kisses all over her face, and the two of you just laughed and laughed. Baby slousters, she called ‘em. You were a very happy baby, Noel. And she was so terribly young herself.

“I don’t think I’ve never hated anyone the way I hated your da. I had her on bed rest with bleeding after he threw her down the stairs while she was carrying Liam. I thought we were going to lose him. God, what a pig. 

“Time went by, and you and Paul must have got big enough to talk back, I suppose, because I started to see you for your own black eyes when you got to be five or six. She brought you to me first for your stuttering, both of you presenting at the same time. I couldn’t believe it. Or I could, because I knew. I sent you on to a therapist friend of mine, and just hoped it would be all right.

“Liam came, and then I really was worried about her. He was an unbelievably difficult baby; she wouldn’t tell me how much she slept. I think it was none. He screamed through every appointment, and her face when she left--I’ve got no words for it. She was going mad trying to keep him quiet so that your da’s temper wouldn’t go off.” Dr Gregson sighed.

“I knew how I felt about her, after a while. It’s not such a big town after all. I’d see her out with you lads at the park, or at mass. I’m a Kerryman myself, and we’d talk about home.”

“Did she love you?” Noel asked. 

“Sometimes I thought so. We never spoke of it. She was married, with three boys. She trusted me, and she believed in marriage and the church.. How could I?” He thought, silent.

“It was me that set your arm when your da broke it. Do you remember?” he asked after a time.

“No,” said Noel. “I remember the beginning of the fight but not anything after for a day or so. Or wait...maybe I do. You were in that dodgy office down at Longsight? And there were posters on the wall of the television series with that good-looking bloke with the sport car out on Jersey?”

“Bergerac.”

“Oh my god! He was so cool. All I wanted was to be that rich and cool one day.”

“It gives a boy something to think about when he’s getting put back together,” Dr Gregson smiled. “I think that was when your mam got really desperate to get out. She made up her mind for good then, but it took a while yet.”

“Another year or two, yeah, until she got the house.”

“And then she was single.” The doctor spread his hands. “And I had got married, myself.”

Noel turned to look at him. Dr Gregson returned his look without flinching.

“I hope I was a good husband to her,” he said simply. “If I had been able to see the future, I don’t know what I would have done. I like to think we were happy.”

“Were?”

“She passed four years ago. Breast cancer.”

“Did you have any kids?” Noel asked.

“No. We married late for the times, and it just never happened. After a while I checked. It’s easy enough for a doctor to do. Just a microscope and slide, and what a man always has close to hand.” He gave a wry smile. “I never told her that it wasn’t me.” 

The silence stretched, soft and cool. The sudden knowledge of a world that he had never imagined, but ran so close to the one he knew, seemed to make ripples in the air. He became aware of Dr Gregson’s attention on him, like a weight over his whole body. This man had watched him grow, had watched him through his entire life from such a distance that Noel might have hardly known him on the street, and yet he seemed to know everything. 

“You lads worried her sick as you grew. Liam especially, of course. She brought him to me with his head bleeding, back when. A street fight and a hammer, was it? What a mess. One of the worst concussions I’ve ever seen.”

“Do you think--” Noel hesitated. “Would he have been normal, if not for that?”

“I don’t think so. There’s other things that might have changed the way he is, though. If your brother was growing up now he’d have a very different life. He’d have been identified before he was six, he’d have that therapy and the other one, and he would have had a much easier time of it. But it was the seventies, and no one knew anything about children like Liam. We thought they were just naughty. Mainly you would have seen a difference in impulse control without the concussion, I think.”

“Well, that’s a lot.” Noel tried to imagine Liam having impulse control and failed. “He wouldn’t even be the same person, would he.”

“No.” The doctor looked at him closely. “He’d be a very different man.”

“I always used to wish he was. But now I’m not sure I would have it, if I could.”

“I’m glad. Your mam was plenty worried about you and him when you were young and wild, but she knew she couldn’t do a thing. After a while she began to see that the two of you always land on your feet, and it seemed to get easier. And--she was safe.” He took a deep breath. “She had her house, her job, her sisters. You lads made sure she had plenty of everything. And the years went by and I...I was her doctor. Maybe her friend. I don’t know.” He wiped his face. Dawn was breaking now, showing how drops of tears and fog clung his mustache. “I think I’ll go before your brother gets back, if you don’t mind.” 

He stared at the house. “Give her a half done of the morphine this morning. You won’t want to start the full load until this evening; she’ll be wanting her last confession.”

“What?” Noel thought he heard wrong. “What do you mean, confession. She never went back. The church didn’t want her because she was divorced.” 

The old man looked at him with a kind of pity. “That doesn’t mean that she didn’t want the Church, Noel. She’ll want to make her peace before she goes. You’ll need to get someone here before she goes fully into the morphine, while she can still confess, just in case we can’t dial it back later on.”

They saw Liam’s head bob into view over the garden fence and disappear round the front of the house. The doctor turned to look keenly at Noel.

“He’s a remarkable man, your brother,” he said.

Noel found himself unable to meet his eyes. “I--yes.” 

“All right, enough of this.” He stood and wiped his face once more. “I’m going to get on to my office. You can call me any time, day or night, and I’ll be here. But… but I’ll also understand if you choose not to call me when the time comes.”

“Thank you. I’m--I’m glad you’re here.”

Dr. Gregson smiled. “She’s been very happy these last few days, you know.” he said. “I don’t think she could have asked for anything better than to have you both back here, all to herself. I’m grateful to you for that.”

Noel ground his hands against his face, crushing the sudden sting of his eyes. He received a bristly kiss on his cheek and then the little man was away through the garden, whistling. Noel was left watching the grey light expand over the rooftop, wondering how long a night and a day could possibly be. 

He found Liam on the edge of Mam’s bed, struggling with the sticky backing of the nitro patch. 

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. Fuckin’ pharmacists, man. They gotta explain everything to you six times and make you sign eighty forms before they give you anything, and then it takes ‘em a year to count out a bottle of pills. Just give me the drugs, d’you know what I mean? I could get better service down on the corner.”

“Yeah. Squares trying to sell drugs. You wouldn’t think they could make it so fuckin’ hard. They should let the professionals do it.”

“Ent that the truth. How was it here?”

“Okay. I mean, I think it was okay?” Noel flung himself down in the big chair. “Honest, I don’t know. This doctor, he does my head in. He thinks we should get Mam last rites. Confession, the oily head, the lot. I mean--he thinks he knows her, you know?”

“Well, he loves her,” Liam said. “He might know.”

Noel stared at him. “How could you--”

Liam rolled his eyes.

“No. No. Don’t you look at me like that. How could you possibly?”

“I’m not silly, Noel. I know you think I’m away with the fairies but we just know about different things, is all.” 

“Shut up. You didn’t know that! Okay, fine, whatever.” Noel rubbed his hair and let the silence spin out. “That man, Liam. He could have been your da.”

“No man, don’t do that.” Liam said softly. “Don’t talk to me that way. Can you imagine--if that was our old fella? If we grew up with him in the house?” He shook his head. “I won’t do it. If I wasn’t your brother, your whole brother, I don’t know who I’d be. I don’t even know if the sun would still rise on the right end. I can’t think of it. Let it be, Noel, let it be.”

“I'm sorry," Noel said. "But, Liam. Where are we going to find a priest? Someone who would give last rites to a divorcee, today?”

“Don’t worry about it. I know someone.”

“You know someone.”

“We’ll go for a walk after Joanie gets here, yeah?”

“You and me are going out walking. You know someone who can hear confession. What universe am I living in?”

“Mine,” Liam said, and smoothed the patch gently over their mother’s arm. “And how about this. The next time I need to know how to make shitloads of money and be a posh cunt I’ll ask you, right? And the next time you need to know if anybody loves you, you ask me.”


	10. Mary of St. Clare and the Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "How do I know if somebody loves me."

Noel struggled up the stairs in a haze of emotion and exhaustion. Alone in his childhood bed he called Sara, as he had every day since his arrival. He didn’t think they’d said one thing of significance to each other in all that time. She might as well have been a million miles away.

“It’s slow,” he said. “No, I think it’s better if you don’t. There’s no room to turn around in this house, nothing to do in Manchester. The boys would be out of their skulls. She sleeps most of the time. Yeah, we’re fine. I mean, he’s Liam. But he’s fine.”

He spent a long time on the phone with Cecile afterward. “Yeah, Highgate’s good. Near the tube. Three. Yeah, three’s good. Whatever, I don’t care. Send exterior photos, I want to see the windows from the outside.”

Then sleep reached up and clawed him under, seemingly for the sole purpose of flickering disturbing images behind his eyelids. Dr Gregson holding two blue-eyed babies. His mother, allowing her wrist to rest in the doctor’s hand. Noel as a boy in the park watching a man in the distance, feeling the weight of passionate interested eyes upon him. The flash of Liam’s long legs as he sat up in bed. A roaring train that ran over the beach and plunged straight into the sea. When you need to know if somebody loves you--

He woke feeling worse than he’d done since giving up the coke. His face in the glass was haggard: two lines running from nose to chin, heavy crease in the brows, eyes marked with splatters at the corners. He stood back from the glass. Well, the rest was not so bad for being small and on the wrong side of fifty. But how did he get so fucking _old_? He poked around in his clothes for something suitable to go find a confessor in, settled on the same gray trousers and white shirt he’d arrived in, and texted Cecile. “Levis, black. White tee. Charcoal also. Spring polos. Warm coat? Freezing my tits here.”

Liam, by contrast, looked like a fucking rose when Noel stumbled downstairs. He stood waiting at the bottom with artfully tousled hair and a spanking shave, wearing dark jeans and a blue shirt whose last button perfectly bent in its hole across the center of his chest. 

“What,” Liam said when he saw him staring.

“Who are you trying to impress?” Noel asked helplessly. Liam flushed.

“Let’s get out of here, cunt, Joanie’s trying to get Mam her bath.”

He pushed them out the door and paused to put on a dark coat whose texture caught Noel’s attention. 

“What is this jacket you’ve got? It looks familiar.”

“Yeah?” 

It had a thick pebbly texture and light toggle buttons, and as Liam pulled up the hood--

“Oh,” said Noel. He had a sudden vivid memory of a cool damp day, of that jacket squishy under his folded hands, himself bent over Liam, and Liam’s long neck exposed as he tilted up his chin-- “ _Oh._ ”

“Mm?” Liam asked.

“Nothing. Em. I was thinking I should have gotten some food before we left, is all.” 

Liam took a bundle from the coat’s big pocket. Toast and jam--apricot--folded into one of Mam’s good napkins, still hot. Noel decided he really was hungry, and watched Liam bounce and swing in his fuzzy coat like a kid.

Liam led him out Crossley Road and down Burnage Lane, heading toward Levenshulme on smaller roads where they seldom used to go. They passed under an avenue of sweet chestnuts, where the blackened hulls and last year’s nuts dotted the sidewalk. Liam gathered up a handful and began pinging them at Noel’s head. Noel dodged one or two, then began deliberately heading them. Sometimes he could even catch them off his own head and lob them right back at Liam, much harder than Liam threw them. Liam was no good at dodging, but much more funny in his efforts. It was a long avenue, and they were both sweating and laughing by the time it ended. 

On the right side of Burnage Lane was a strip of dodgy automobile dealers, and on the left was a row of lush brick houses with walled gardens--the kind of confusion one never encountered in Little Venice, and which felt homelike to Noel despite its ugliness. Opposite the grimiest broken-bottle auto lot they found a little church that seemed to spring up out of its own mossy garden. Littered with stained glass windows, ivy and oak swarming the walls...Noel didn’t know there was a place so pretty in Manchester.

“Mary of St Clare and the Angels?” he asked.

“Yeah. I always liked St Clare, you know?”

“You did?”

“Fuck, yeah. Cutting off all ‘er hair and sneaking out the window to get away from her old man? ‘Er an ‘er wild girls running over the country with St Francis, getting up to trouble in the bushes, probably, til the pope locked ‘em up. And anybody who wants something so much they can hallucinate it on the wall, that’s my kind of girl.”

“But, this is Church of England.”

Liam shrugged.

"Liam? Who are we seeing here?” 

“My confessor.”

“What??”

But Liam just threw him a laughing look and sauntered through the mossy garden, leaving Noel to sneck the gate behind him.

The priest was so much younger than Noel expected. He came forward eagerly with a murmured greeting, with the light from soaring arched windows on him. Younger even than Liam, no more than forty at most, with soft brown hair and an unlined face as round and rosy as a girl’s. Somehow it had never occurred to Noel even once in all the years they spent apart that Liam must have other friends--real friends, not just football mates. Yet these two were obviously close. He saw it in the way they clasped both hands and spoke in one another’s ear. Noel felt himself prickle. What exactly did Liam tell his confessor, and how much did this man know about him?

The man shot Liam a quick look and stepped forward to offer his hand.

“Mr. Gallagher. I’m so happy to meet you,” he said. He spoke in a Geordie accent, broad and friendly. There was a gap in his front teeth that made his smile almost unspeakably charming. 

Noel gritted his teeth. “Noel,” he corrected, quite calmly he thought, but he must be doing that thing of scaring people without knowing it again because the man’s brow creased with worry. 

“Father Richard Milburn,” the priest said. “Would you come in my office for tea?”

Liam wasted no time on chat once they were seated in Father Richard’s sun-speckled office. 

“You know about my mam,” he began. “Well, she’s dyin’. Got a couple days left, maybe. And she’s Catholic. She ‘asn’t been to mass or confession in about forty years, but a friend of hers--a friend--” his eyes flickered toward Noel-- “thinks that she wants last rites. But she can’t have em, ‘cos she’s divorced. The church told her years ago they don’t want her to come at all unless she’s come to be sorry for it. But she can’t repent of getting divorced, 'cos me dad was a cunt and beat the living shit out of us, and her as well. An’ she wouldn’t get an annulment even if there was time ‘cos then we would be bastards. So we don't know what to do.”

Father Richard looked quietly at his hands. “Well, first let me say that I’m honored that you came to me, Liam. And to you, Mr Gal--Noel. It’s a tremendous trust to speak of the last days of a loved one to someone outside the family, and I know a little of how important your mother is to you. As for your dilemma ....

“I understand that the Roman Church must be your first choice, and I see your difficulty. There’s been a lot of controversy in the Roman Church about divorce and reconciliation in the last few years, and to be honest I’m not exactly sure where our local priesthood falls on the matter. It would surely be a time-consuming process to find out. That said...The Church of England considers itself a branch on the tree of the Roman Church, not its child. We are not so different at all. We do have private confession; sometimes in a booth, sometimes in a private meeting such as this.”

Noel looked at his brother. He sat slouched in a chair with long legs extended in front of him, expensive trainers sprawled incongruously on the Oriental rug. Did they meet here in front of the mahogany bookshelves, chairs pushed close so their knees touched? Did he kneel in the shadowy confessional, with the wicker screen casting shadows on his face?

“And we have last rites,” Father Richard said. “It looks virtually identical to the Roman Catholic sacraments. We use slightly different prayer forms, but they can be substituted if you like. Really,” he said gently, “Any comfort that I can offer to your mother and your family, I am very happy to give.”

“Yeah, I don't really care about any o' that” Noel said. “I just want to know if my mam's going to think I've done the dirty on her when she get's to heaven and finds she's made her last confession to fucking Church of England?”

Father Richard laughed. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But if you’re concerned about including a Roman Catholic presence, I know someone.”

“Fuck me,” said Noel. “Everybody fucking knows someone.”

Father Richard brought a nun. A fucking nun! Noel laughed out loud when he saw them coming up the walk, the handsome young priest in his vicar’s collar and a million-year-old nun with her wimple in striking blue. It was the same blue that Liam used when he wanted to look like Galetea shuddering into life--the same color he was wearing right now, in fact. Noel threw a glance at him, uncharacteristically straightening pillows and removing medical crap from around Mam’s bed. Preparing for visitors, and caring about it? Noel narrowed his gaze on the two outside. 

They chatted companionably as they walked, heads leaning toward each other. What did nuns talk about, he wondered. And for that matter, what did Anglican priests talk about, or think about? They could marry, right? Noel looked for a ring and didn’t see one. Not that that meant anything though. Noel himself had worn rings. Some meant something, others didn’t. And they didn’t always mean what you thought. 

Noel found he wasn’t prepared for his mother’s reaction to their presence at all. She was alert when they came in, and sunshine broke over her face so brightly when she saw the nun that he wondered if they were old friends. But no, the two old ladies listened attentively as Father Richard introduced them and shook with beautiful birdlike hands, they just _knew_ each other somehow, the same way Liam knew...everything, it seemed.  
Noel busied himself in the kitchen while they did all the private stuff, self examination and confession and all, which he remembered vaguely from confirmation classes. It was sweet that Mam was happy but honestly it made his skin crawl, like a cologne that just wouldn’t sit right. He turned his mind instead to making a meal out of the things he’d ordered earlier in the week. 

Noel had a general rule about cooking, which was that he didn’t do it. Sara liked it and was good at it, and when she didn’t feel like it, well, what else were they rich for? But he was damned if he’d let Liam serve him a beautiful meal like he did last night and not attempt to return the favor. He struggled with recipes on his phone for what seemed like hours. How fucking complicated could sole fillets be, and why did every one of them call for confusing ingredients he’d never seen before like finely shredded parsley and seasoned bread crumbs?

His mood was not improved by Liam’s presence at the kitchen table, playing Noel’s guitar. He looked serene enough to be almost vacant, and Noel was irritated by the delicate way he touched the strings. People liked to think Liam was both unmusical and stupid, but he wasn’t. Obviously. No one could sing the way he did without musicality, and a certain strange intelligence. He had a surprisingly deft touch and let each nylon string ring free with a tone that was almost metallic. There was a singy little arpeggio and a moving bass line. It reminded Noel of Songbird but it wasn’t, and he tried to place it while squeezing lemons and trying to make a salad of spinach greens and the berries Mam wasn’t drinking in her smoothies. A love song, obviously, but what?

“What’s it like to be the talented one?” Liam had asked him once. 

“I dunno, what’s it like to be the good looking one?” Noel shot back. 

“I’m serious, Noel.”

Noel was twenty eight, as good looking as he’d ever be, and things were insane just about every minute of the day. Somewhere in Texas he had shoved every person out of Liam’s room, locked the door, and turned on the telly. Liam flipped through the channels until he found one playing Dirty Dancing and settled to watch it perfect entranced stillness, just like he did every time. Noel sat with his guitar, and it had all beautifully quiet until Liam started thinking.

“I am too. You first.”

“I dunno. I mean, it’s great being the good looking one, innit? It’s fuckin’ bananas. You get up, sing a few tunes, grab a bird and shag yourselves senseless. It’s brilliant.” This was just about what Noel thought he would say. “But,” Liam’s face grew clouded. “Sometimes I wish they didn’t think I’m stupid. They think I’m your puppet.”

“You are my puppet. You sing what I tell you to.”

“Yeah, but I’m not only your puppet. I’m also, fuck, I dunno.”

“I know you’re not,” Noel said, and set aside the guitar.

“So what’s it like being the talented one?” Liam asked again.

“Well, you get the girls and the drugs either way, ‘cos guitars. And that’s fun. But...it’s heavy. ‘Cos there still has to be songs, right? I mean, here I am on a F1 racetrack or a helicopter with a bunch of models and I’ve been fucking cabbaged for 18 months, and we still need twelve songs that’ll blow everybody’s head off. And I’m the one that’s got to do it, and meanwhile make sure fuckers aren’t robbing us blind…” He trailed off.

“I wish everyone didn’t think you’re a dick,” Liam said quietly.

“I am a dick.”

“Yeah, but you’re not just a dick. You’re also--”

“I know, kid.” Noel rolled down to lie on his elbows beside Liam and looked into his face. “But fuck them, you know what I mean? They don’t know anything. Nobody knows shit about you and me.”

Liam smiled. A pink light from the flickering television lit the room, and he brightened like a star. Bubbly commercial hearts drifted across the screen. “Hey,” he said, “It’s the fourteenth. You’re my Valentine.”

“Well, yeah.” Noel climbed on top of him and began working his shirt off. “Come on, is it ‘s not time for Jennifer Grey’s tits yet.”

The swinging door interrupted Noel’s reverie. 

“Your mother asks if you’ll join us now,” Father Richard said from the door. Something wasn’t right in his voice, something constrained. Noel looked at him sharply. This man was telling lies, somehow. He had a secret. Noel looked at Liam and saw a trace of discomfort in his face. He didn’t know what it was but felt it too.

By the time Noel sat down in one of the kitchen chairs nearest his mother, all his alarm bells were clanging. Sister Therese sat at her left hand, nearest the wall. She looked as though she were holding his mother up with her presence. Mam’s hands were wrapped tight over a fold of her blanket, and she wrung it slowly as he approached. What the _fucking_ hell was going on? There was Liam, moving behind him. Noel caught at his hand and pressed it tight to his shoulder. Liam understood; he squeezed Noel's hand and remained standing behind him. Father Richard took a seat by Mam’s feet. Noel looked back at Liam to be sure. No, he didn’t know what was coming either.

“I need to ask your pardon,” their mother began. “It’s been heavy on my mind for years and it never seemed like the time. I didn’t want to dig up the past. But now--” she looked at the priest wryly, “It’s time. I need...I need you to hear. And forgive me if you can.”

“Mam, there’s nothing to forgive,” said Noel. “What could we possibly?”

“Your da,” she said.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Noel interrupted.

“It was,” she said. “I knew what he was. There was a good man who would have taken me when you were young. I didn’t have to go back to Ireland. But I thought--I always hoped each day would be a little better. And I believed each day was a little better, until it wasn’t, and it was too late for that day.”

“Mam, don’t,” Liam said.

“I have to,” she said. “I stayed, I let him stay, I let him treat you....And you got bigger and bigger, and it always got worse and I let it so.”

“You went as soon as you could, Mam, you did the best you could--” Noel said.

“That’s not true. I didn’t,” she said sharply. Her hands convulsed on the blanket. She took a long rough breath, and she looked at him in a desperate way that filled him with dread.

“Noel. I knew.”

That wasn’t true, Noel thought. It wasn’t true, she never knew. She couldn’t possibly. If she knew--

He stood abruptly. Her eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to stop it,” she said. “And when it was over and you were safe...I thought it would be worse to talk. I didn’t want to make you remember.”

She thought because they didn't talk he didn’t _remember_?

“I hope...I hope you can still--” she began.

He left. He went into the garden, sat on the bench with his head in his hands, and thought of absolutely nothing until he heard the front door close. Then he went to the kitchen and began packing dishes into stacks.

Plates in one, cups in another, saucers beside. Mam loved her rose-spray china. It was one of the only really valuable things she ever bought for herself with all the money they gave her. She loved the round teapot and fluted cream server, the broad platter for roasts, the soup tureens, so thin they were almost translucent. He stacked them all carefully and carried them out to the garden. After a time Liam came and helped him. Every dish in the house went out the back door. Liam left him without speaking. Then Noel stood back and smashed every fucking one of them against the garden wall.

They piled in bonelike shards in the flower bed. Soon he had to raise his aim as it got taller. Some burst harder and louder, and others flew apart as if they had hardly resisted splitting into bits until the second he let them go. They fell like birds to the ground. Hundreds of them, it seemed, and every one of them popped and shattered against the brick just like his stupid fucking heart.

He walked all night. He walked through Levenshulme, Longsight, and Ardwick, past the O2 Apollo where they had played both separately and together. He crossed every bridge over the River Irwell. He watched the steady glow of false promises in the windows of Rylands Library and Manchester Cathedral. He walked past the gates of St Michael’s Flags and Angel. He stood by the barrel fires of the bums under the flyover, even though all the people he used to know there were dead. He walked Canal Street up and down, long after the bars were closed, and near dawn he stood on Blackfriar’s Bridge and watched the stars go out.

Liam was still awake when he came in. Mam was in her bed, looking dead already. He sat in the one good chair with Noel’s guitar, playing the song Noel couldn’t place.

“How do I know if somebody loves me,” Noel said.

“They let you go.” Liam’s fingers kept moving, mysteriously delicate. His expression didn’t change. “They let you do what you need to do. When you tell people that everything they do is shit it burns but they know it’s lies. And when you’re ready--when they’re pretty fuckin’ sure you’re ready, even if they aren’t totally sure but they just can’t stand it anymore--they let you back.”

Noel nodded and went upstairs. He threw his heart on the bed and slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The church is exactly as I describe it, on Burnage Avenue in Longsight, but it's called St Agnes. Mary of St Clare and the Angels is over in Levenshulme, closer to the boys' house but less pretty, and Roman Catholic.
> 
> Sister Therese belongs to the Sisters of Nazareth, who have an assisted living house for adults at the end of life in Prestwich, on the north side of Manchester. She takes the bus to Burnage as part of her calling, and her blue habit really is quite lovely.
> 
> There are in fact rumors of sisters who perform sacraments themselves, but it's difficult to get hard information on it, understandably. Certainly there are many people, Catholic and not, who think the world and the Roman Catholic Church would be better off if it approved the ordination of women as priests. I deeply wanted to find enough material to justify a nun offering Peggy absolution, but couldn't do it. On my personal reading list for this issue is Woman at the Alter by Irish broadcaster (and former religious sister) Lavinia Byrne.
> 
> Also, here is Galatea shuddering into life: https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/436483/1728751/main-image
> 
> And many thanks to likeamadonna for pointing out the obvious truth that rock stars must watch Dirty Dancing with avidity in hotel rooms. Of course they do.


	11. Night Rule

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t want this to be over when she goes. I want to still be your brother.”
> 
> “I do too. But I don’t know how. I have a few ideas.”
> 
> “I think I’m gonna fuckin’ hate your ideas.”

Joan was busy about Mam’s bed when Noel came in, black and groggy from sleep.

“Well! Are we glad to see you,” she said to him. “I know a young lady who’s been missing you.” 

Noel cast a glance at his mother. She was deep in the morphine, hands left open on the cover and vapor rolling from a nebulizer mask on her mouth. He went past her to the kitchen.

He found Liam faffing about with tea things, bouncing his head to whatever strange music rolled around inside. He went straight up and, without thinking a bit, inserted himself into the space between Liam’s arms.

He couldn’t have said why he did it. He couldn’t even say exactly what he was doing, because all his thoughts had turned to metallic smoke and burnt wire. He just wanted the feel of Liam’s arms, loose and surprised before folding around him. He just wanted Liam under his nose, smelling exactly like he used to ages ago. He seemed to have got so much bigger since the last time they’d stood like this, and now here were his tall shoulders, the ragged sound both their breathing, and Liam’s big hand on his neck, everything making Noel all dizzy and stupid. 

Liam seemed to have gone all wobbly, which was a mess because he was the only thing holding Noel up at all. They made an unsteady tower that stumbled about until Liam planted his two feet across the floor, pinned Noel against him from neck to knee, and held him there like a broken bird. _Sh, sh, I’m here love it’s all right_ he murmured, and the thump of his chest was like a drum in Noel’s own, and his arms were too tight to sob in, which really was what Noel had come for in the first place.

It took a long time to calm down, the more so because Liam kept _breathing_ on him, on his neck or the ends of his hair. The little electrocutions made him jolt and twist against Liam’s arms--not so hard as to get away, but enough to make him hold Noel tighter and his breath press in Noel's ear, which started them down the same road all over again. Noel had never in his life been so grateful to have a lover who was bigger than him. They fought this way for a long time before Noel really relaxed and dropped his head onto Liam’s shoulder.

“You’re a nut,” Liam said. “Christ, you scared the shit out o’me.” Noel stirred in his arms. “I’m not saying don’t do it,” he added hastily. “Do it. Next time I’ll be ready. But fuckin’ hell, Noel, twelve years.” His hand moved hesitantly to Noel’s hair. The kitchen clock sounded like drops of water, and his fingers moved like the easy passage of time. 

Noel’s brain began to grind into gear. “I’m hungry,” he said. “I’ll have to call something in. Shit, we have nothing to eat from.”

Liam shuffled them around in a circle so that Noel could see a stack of new dishes on the worktop: service for four in heavy cafeware.

“Thank you,” said Noel quietly.

They began to pull themselves apart. It was sweaty and shaky; confusing, delicious and embarrassing. The vague words, _to have a lover_ floated unexamined in the air. Noel straightened his rumpled clothes.

Liam cleared his throat. “You want a proper fry-up?”.

“God no. Eggs and toast, maybe juice or something. I’ll get it though.”

“Sit down.”

Noel sat at the table and watched the vague thoughts traverse his mind as Liam moved around the kitchen. It occurred to him that he didn’t remember when he’d last eaten a meal that Liam hadn’t prepared with his own hands. 

It was the two of them, alone in all the world. Noel had been fucking sure of it, his entire life. More than anything in the world, he lived by the sure conviction that nobody knew what he and Liam knew and that it was them against the rest, always. Then when Liam had gone, it had been him alone.

There was Sara. He loved her. She was beautiful, unflappable, endlessly loyal. She accepted everything he’d ever done without criticism, almost without comment. Her independence was stunning, especially after the boys came and she seemed to grow a second nervous system that had nothing at all to do with him. 

Sometimes that beautiful independence, that total acceptance of him combined with complete disinterest in anything he _did_ , was exactly what he needed: an oasis of no-need in the endless trek of accomplishment that was the rest of his life. But he had no illusions about what made shit happen. It was him, moving worlds for her--for their life together. He could do it, and he was proud of it. But he was tired, was the thing. He was fucking knackered to the bone of making the sun rise every morning and he had completely forgotten what it was like to have Liam around.

Liam never _did_ anything, and yet things happened when he was there. This was what was twisting Noel’s head, as much as Mam dying there in the living room: constantly remembering how when Liam was around the world just happened all on its own. The sun vaulted up in the morning, songs rained down on Noel’s head, the very air that snaked through Manchester’s manky streets grew pregnant with meaning, and Noel’s heart came alive in his chest as if he hadn’t been a dead man walking for twelve years. 

Liam set down a plate filled with eggs, toast, and the fruit that their mother was never going to swallow. 

“I left dinner last night,” Noel said slowly.

“Two nights ago,” Liam said.

“Fuck me. I’m sorry.”

“You left it ready, though. I just popped it in the oven. She loved it.”

“Go on.”

“No, she did.” Liam grinned. “She thought raspberries and spinach was real posh. Kept talking about it.” 

Noel smiled. Then despair dropped back in his stomach like a rock. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. 

“I know,” Liam said, and Noel believed that he understood all he was trying to say.

Liam sat down beside him and slid his big hand into Noel’s. Noel adjusted his fingers to rest more comfortably around it, and they sat looking at themselves holding hands. Men’s hands, Noel thought. Liam’s were bigger and his were darker, but they were strikingly alike all the same. Noel had never kissed Liam’s fingers. Embarrassed by the similarity, Noel had never once revealed his desire to feel Liam’s rough knuckles against his mouth, not in all the years they were both brothers and lovers. He might as well have kissed his own reflection in the glass, but he wanted it still. He thought of it again as he looked at Liam’s hand and brushed with his thumb the spot where he would kiss. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he said again. 

“It’s not gonna be long, Noel,” Liam said. “She’s almost dead already. When she’s gone, what are you going to wish you had done?”

Noel ate his eggs and went to the living room. 

Joanie was putting the room to rights when he entered. Her rosy face grew first wary at his approach, then brighter as he began to move things around. “I’ll just see to the washing up,” she said, and began gathering laundry.

Noel pulled the chair as close as it would go and took his mother’s hand. Her fingers twitched as she slept. What did she dream about, he wondered. She had lived alone for more than thirty years. Noel tried to imagine thirty years of sleeping alone and couldn’t. He tried to envision some way that her life might seem as vital and vivid to her as his did to him, and failed at that, too. 

But perhaps...perhaps that wasn’t what Mam was looking for. Maybe she wanted quiet as much as Noel wanted to stuff the whole world in his mouth at once. He fucking hoped so, because that was what she’d got. Maybe that’s why she never knew of what used to pass in the room at the top of the stairs--because it wasn’t fucking sweet. It wasn’t pretty like her flowers and dishes, or ordinary like the grubby streets of Burnage. She didn't know because she couldn't--not without ruining what she had of a good life. 

He became aware that her fingers were conscious in his own. She was awake, or something like it. He’d never held much with smackheads and didn’t know what she might understand if he spoke to her. He wondered what he ought to say. He wondered how he would feel when she was dead.

“Did I ever tell you about my sons, Joan?” She spoke suddenly, and with surprising clearness.

“Sons, have you?” said Joan. “Tell me about them.” She sat on the opposite side of Mam’s bed. It must be part of the job, Noel thought, listening to the family disasters of dying ladies.

“Lovely, lovely men,” his mother said in her slow way. “You wouldn’t believe it when they stand together. Such handsome lads. You wouldn’t guess it to look at me, but what’s plain in a woman is handsome in a man, innit?” 

Noel stirred. It pained him to think that his mother knew she was plain. She shushed him with a squeeze, though he hadn’t said a word. He wondered who she thought he was right now, or if she understood he was there.

“And the way they love each other,” she went on. “Love like mad. Noel was the best brother you ever saw when they were weans. He used to say to me, let them alone, Liam was his own baby and he knew what to do with him. And Liam….” she shook her head. “He thought the sun rose and set on his brother. I’d tell him to do owt, and he’d look at Noel to see if it was right.”

There was a sound at the kitchen door behind him. Noel lifted his hand for quiet. 

“What a pair. They drove me daft. They’d fight and play, then wrestle and kiss, then bang each other in the head. I tried to keep them apart, but they wouldn’t be kept. Like magnets. I never thought it would last, Joan, when they quit speaking.” 

She touched her eyes, but Joanie was already there with a tissue. “I should have known they’d have a pig-head contest. Such vain and stubborn cunts. But how they miss each other. They call me every day, Joan, and ask how the other is. Every day for twelve years, and never call each other.” Her old face crumpled. “I don’t know what they’ll do when they can’t ask me anymore.”

Suddenly it was quite fucking enough for Noel. He told Joan to go. She smiled a little to herself as she gathered her things, and he saw that she understood he meant nothing about her.

“I want my guitar,” he told his brother. Joan went out while Liam brought it from the kitchen. Noel signed in relief when the door closed behind her. He needed to be alone with Mam and Liam, had an itch for it down under his skin. His rage and betrayal still waited and he didn’t know what the fuck he’d do when everything was over and he could look at the black in his gut without fear of hurting Mam anymore. But just now he couldn’t be arsed about it. There were things he needed to do, and not much time.

He began to play a familiar progression, and it felt good in his hands. Liam folded himself up on the bed by Mam’s knees. Noel watched how he sank into the tight floating strands of the sustained chords, the intent listening movement of his lashes. God, Noel had forgotten how fucking beautiful he was like that. He got lost thinking about it, and the chords went round a dozen times or more before he realized that Liam wasn’t going to sing until he was told.

 _“Liam,”_ he said, and Liam sparked and caught like a match.

“I need to be myself, I can’t be no one else….” 

It was like a leather jacket that fit like skin, hearing Liam’s voice with his own ears again. It felt like throwing everything he owned into the fire. Noel’s skin crawled with dread and triumph, with the fucking inevitability of falling in love with his brother again. They played for hours. They played things they’d done together, things they’d never recorded, things Liam had never heard before but sang the second time through. Now and then he’d hand Liam the guitar, and he’d play something awkward and sweet in its rough tenderness.

After a while Mam began to toss. It was time for her pill again. He nodded toward the table of drugs, and Liam moved to get it. The pills must be bitter, because although she opened her mouth readily her face always contracted like lemons when she swallowed them. Liam made coaxing noises and held up the covered cup for her to sip from. But they had waited too long to re-dose her and the pain made her jumpy and anxious. She gripped his wrist.

“Sing it for me,” she said.

“Sing what, Mam.”

“My song. Live Forever.”

Liam looked uneasily at Noel. “That’s Noel’s song, Mam.”

“But you sing it for me. You always sang it for me.”

“Do it,” Noel said. 

Liam looked at him like he didn’t believe it. Noel made him pay through the nose to play that one at his solo shows, and frankly he took a lot of pleasure from doing it. He might do it again later, too, but now-- “Go on,” he said impatiently, and started the intro.

It was fucking astonishing how Liam’s voice had come back from decades of misrule. Noel would never have believed it was possible if it wasn’t there right in front of his eyes. A forty-nine years old man had no right to sound like that, to hold that sweet choir-boy timbre and a grown-man’s rasp at the same time. He was learning to use his voice at last, too, and it made Noel want to put his hands all over the sound and rub it around like clay.

Mam grew calmer now as the morphine began to take effect, and watched Liam with open adoration until she fell asleep. They kept on playing. It felt good, and there was the pretext of Mam dying to keep them both there. Nothing to see, just brothers jamming a bit. Just the dark house pooling around them and the slow red throb of the lava lamp. 

Liam moved a lot of pillows so that he could lay his head down near Mam’s knee. Noel recognized the look of a tired boy who didn’t want to leave with the party still going. He changed to the key of B and played four beats. Liam smiled and blinked like a sleepy owl. “It’s a bit early in the midnight hour for me,” he began.

It was a long song, and by the end Liam was half asleep, still singing. 

“Go to bed,” Noel said quietly.

Liam lifted his head. “I don’t want to,” he said, and his eyes were bright with tears.

“We’ll do it again, I promise,” Noel said. 

Liam climbed slowly to his feet. “She needs water every hour or so,” he told Noel.

“I know.”

“And her blowy thing there, she needs it in about two hours. She gets all wheezy without it.”

“Liam. Go to bed.”

“I don’t want bed," Liam burst out. "I fuckin’ hate the bed, sleeping’s fuckin’ boring.” He stood by the door like he couldn’t figure out how to leave.

Noel put down the guitar. “C’mere,” he said.

Liam bent over, and Noel couldn’t remember if he was supposed to be saying goodnight to his brother, his son, his lover or what. It ended up being something in the middle, he supposed. Something nudgey and tender and far too long for normal blokes, but at least with no tongues involved; Noel pushed him away just in time. “I don’t want this to be over when she goes,” Liam said in his ear. “I want to still be your brother.”

“I do too,” Noel confessed. “But I don’t know how. I have a few ideas.”

“I think I’m gonna fuckin’ hate your ideas.”

“I know you will. But it’s the best I’ve got.”

“G’night, Noel. Don’t let her die while I’m asleep.”

When he had gone Noel got out the extra duvet and set out Mam’s night time pills. The stuffy little house felt as empty as a cathedral. At night it made a dozen noises that he could never hear during the day, and it seemed to get cold even when the heater was on. Mam thought so too, apparently. She roused, shivering, and tapped the bed.

“Noel. Come up here,” she said. He obediently snaked onto the bed, dragging the duvet with him. She pointed out where she wanted him to lie, and at last he lay by her side, face tucked into her shoulder for the first time since he was a child. She smelled like antiseptic, bad soap, and strange drugs, but underneath it all there was a whiff of his mother as she used to be--the scent of her before there was Liam or even Da, when she was the only being in the world to him, so beautifully large, smelling of lavender, vinyl , bread, and her own soft animal smell. Each moment sounded like a liquid drop, tiny and perfect.

“Noel,” she said. “I worry about what’s going to happen to you when I go.” 

“Me?” He stirred. “Why would you worry about me? My life is perfect.”

She smiled, mysterious and large in the dark, and didn’t argue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the interests of truthiness I should say here that Liam swears he cannot cook--but we all know those boys wills say anything in service of a good story.


	12. Statements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Fuck you didn't know."
> 
> "I did, then. But I didn't understand."

There followed a few days of the most normal life Noel remembered in that house. No one was high. Nobody was fucking in the shadows after the grownups had gone to bed. No one hit anybody or had any sort of emotional breakdown at all. It was amazing.

Dr Gregson continued to come every day. Noel watched him prepare to leave over and over one evening, gathering his things but never quite making it out of his chair. His eyes followed Liam around the room without cessation, until at last Noel realized what was going on and asked him to stay for tea. Liam ended the evening by showing off photos of all his kids to Dr Gregson, and sending a snap of the two of them to Lennon and Gene. After that the doctor stayed to tea every night. 

They’d eat things like beans and toast, toads in a hole, bangers and mash--nursery foods, Noel supposed--and watch football or read the news. Once Dr Gregson brought boxes of fish and chips from round the corner, and Liam and Noel argued about who got to have peas and who had to have peas wet.The doctor watched without comment and, when they had settled whose plate was whose, handed round a bottle of twelve year scotch from his kit. They all got a bit pissed and the doctor regaled them with stories of his growing-up in Dingle and escape to Edinburgh for medical school in the sixties. Noel found himself laughing a lot, and once or twice he found the doctor’s eyes focused on him with the same intent curiosity with which he followed Liam. Mam woke momentarily whenever the laughter got loud and surveyed the room with a look of profound contentment. 

He and Liam washed up together later on, giving the two of them a few minutes alone. 

“Did you ever wonder what it would have been like to have a proper old fella?” Noel asked.

“All the fuckin' time,” Liam replied, but wouldn’t say any more.

When they reentered the living room they found the old people’s hands laced together quietly on her blanket. Liam took to calling the doctor George after that, and Noel made sure to shake his hand whenever he left. Mam looked happy when he was around, and that was all Noel really cared about.

Sister Therese also came every day, walking up from the bus station in her sensible shoes and radiant blue wimple. Soon Liam was plying her with tea and jammy dodgers, flirting and clowning to make her laugh a shy, startled, nun’s laugh, and then staying to pray the rosary with her and Mam. Noel left them carefully alone at these times, but found himself wishing he could photograph their bent heads gleaming in the window light.

The songs continued to pour through him until he was exhausted. He tried not to think too hard about it, just scribble down lyrics and record a rough take on his phone and get clear for the next one. He was reasonably sure that Liam was also writing tunes; he heard him humming them from another room, or sometimes slowly picking them out on Noel’s guitar, always when Noel was busy elsewhere. Never when Noel could properly hear them.

“That sounds real good, love,” Liam said to him one afternoon. Noel let a couple of beats ring out under his fingers. He was tinkering with a tune while Liam sat near Mam’s bed, looking after her nebulizer treatment. The machine was noisy, and he hadn’t been thinking about what anyone else in the room could hear. It came to him now that Liam had been watching him with undisguised adoration for some time.

“You’re getting your ones down, right?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” Liam said.

“You should play them for her more.”

“Well, I can’t with you always there looking, can I?”

“Can’t you?”

“Course not. I can’t do fuck-all when you’re looking, 'cept sing.”

“All right. Why don’t you open your mail there, and then I’ll leave for a bit?”

“I have mail?”

“In a stack by the door? It’s always here.”

“Just adverts and that.” Liam shrugged.

Noel picked up an envelope with Liam's name on it. “It’s an account statement, knobhead. Why didn’t you ever change your address?”

“So a bill, then.”

“No, an _account_ statement. It means they have money for you, your money. It’s an investment statement.”

“I have investments?”

Noel threw the envelope at his head. Liam tore it open and grew very still.

“Noel. This is a lot of money.”

“It better had, it’s been twenty years and more.”

“What are you telling me? Do you know about this?” Liam demanded.

“Jesus. Don’t you remember anything? You were there, we both were. You signed your name.”

They had been making really good money for a year or two, and eventually Noel realized that he was spending absolutely astronomical sums on drugs. It wouldn’t be hard to spend it all. He started asking around, and that was how he dragged Liam to the City and made their way into a low-rise building in Aldgate, sitting opposite a doughy fellow who reportedly knew how to make money have babies, but seemed terrified of their stubble and shades.

“Explain to me what you want again, Mr. Gallagher,” the fellow said. 

“I want you to take my money every month and make it into more money. That’s what you do, right? So maybe ten percent of everything I make, can you do that?”

“You’d like to invest ten percent of your total holdings?” The man looked at Noel’s bank statement from Barclay’s, then looked again. “You have all this in a... in an ordinary chequeing account?”

“Where else?” Noel said rudely. “Ten now, and ten percent of everything that comes in. Can you make that happen?”

The man shifted in his seat. “Typically we require personal authorization on the phone for a transfer from a personal account. Automatic deductions are subject to confusion--”

“Listen, Mister,” Noel told him. “I’m sober today. But I haven’t been in eighteen months and I don’t plan on doing it again for a long fucking time, so this is the day we’re going to do business.” He leaned forward. “Now, I have a lot of money. And I plan on spending a _lot_ of fucking money. But I don’t want to be fifty years old and have me credit card turned down whilst trying to buy a pair of shoes, d’you know what I mean? I’m not gonna remember call my fucking investment manager on the fifteenth of every month from now until doomsday. I’m not even going to remember to put on my trousers the right way ‘round. I need it to happen without paying attention, or it’s not going to happen.”

“I think we could come to terms on a suitable investment portfolio,” the man said, looking at Noel’s bank balance again. “And would you describe your risk tolerance as high, medium, or--”

“High,” Noel interrupted.

Liam cracked up in the chair beside him, murmuring the word _high_ under his breath. Noel sighed. “This one’ll need the same. Only more. Can you do fifteen percent for him?”

“Why do I have to do more?” Liam asked. Noel looked at him sourly.

“‘Cos you’re gonna have kids to support.”

“Am I then?” Liam said. 

Noel could have slapped him for the look of sheer anticipation that crossed his face.

The investment statement hung loose in Liam’s hand. “What do I do?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Noel replied. “Do what?”

“You don’t understand,” Liam said. “Noel….I’m not like you, I don’t have publishing rights, there isn’t loads of money coming in from Sony or wherever. I divided everything I had twice. I almost retired to France because I couldn’t live in London and pay the kids’ schools. I know it’s me own fault and you don’t see me crying but....Jesus. I don’t remember a fuckin’ thing about this. And now I don’t even need it ‘cos I’ve got me own records and all but…” There were actual tears in his eyes. “Fuck. I was so scared. And you did this. It was here all the time, and I didn’t ever--”

“I know,” Noel said gently. “Save it til you get old. Give it to the kids, give it to charity, whatever.” Joanie came bustling in, and the conversation ended.

It turned out that Joan had a huge thing for American rhythm and blues music. Noel discovered it by accident, fucking around with Beatles tunes in the living room while she went about her business. Just like the old ladies passing Manchester Arndale when he was a kid, she gave an involuntary shimmy whenever he played the opening notes of Twist and Shout. He quietly searched his memory for cheesy midcentury hits and ended up getting similar results with Maybelline, I Got a Woman, Lucille, and--most memorably--Shake a Tail Feather. At last he asked her about her taste in music.

“Oh, Lord, Mr. Noel!” she said. “My mam used to work summers out at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and at night you could get Radio Luxembourg down on the shore. My older sister and me would go out with her friends, and there’d be boys with a transistor radio and sometimes a bottle of ale…” Her expression grew distinctly reminiscent. “That was before Radio One, of course. You never knew what would come next, or what the announcer might say. Or where anyone might be by the end of the night. It was good times, then. I was just a wean myself,” she added hastily. “Too young to get up to any trouble of my own, of course.”

“Of course,” Noel agreed. After that he often picked away at late 50s pop songs tucked in his memory. He told himself it was because he was bored off his tits, and besides no one could write the best songs in the world all day _every_ day. He didn’t dignify with notice his own pleasure when he made her smile about her work, broad face growing rosy as she sang under her breath.

Liam had no such qualms about enjoying his own pleasures. One time he walked through during Wake Up Little Suzy, swung chubby Joan around in a pretty credible jitterbug until her whole face turned pink, kissed her hand, and went on through to the kitchen like he’d never even dreamed of disturbing his cool. Sometimes he sat at Noel’s knee and demanded that he play first this song, then the other one--everything from I Want to Hold Your Hand to Just What I Needed. 

“I’m not playing the fucking Cars.” Noel objected. “I don’t even know any fucking Cars.”

“It’s a fucking tune. Play it.” Liam said.

Noel recalled that it had been Liam’s favorite song on the radio when he was about ten, and played it. The dimple that appeared in Liam's cheek and the brightness in his expression during the chorus was worth it, Noel decided.

Noel’s obligations seemed to have comfortably dwindled into nothing, and he hardly even heard from Cecile for a time. He was on writer’s retreat, was what she said to everyone who asked for him, and they seemed content to let him at it.

It wasn’t so easy for Liam. He cancelled dates left and right and made Debbie tell everyone he was “unwell.” From his quick checks of the news, Noel gathered that most of the world assumed he was in rehab. Liam didn’t seem bothered enough to reply, but Noel understood that the pressure to return must be intense when he overheard him arguing with Debbie on the phone one night.

They carefully avoided entering their shared room when the other was present, so Noel had already started away from the door when he heard Liam’s voice inside. Then it rose unexpectedly, with a bite that Noel rarely heard these days.

“I’m not doin’ it, Debs. I don’t care about the jet. Yeah I know Manchester has a fuckin’ airport, I just don’t care. Fuck Brussels, fuck Munich, fuck Cologne. Yeah, and them other ones, too. I’m out o’practice, my head’s not in it, I haven’t seen the band in a month, and me mam’s about to have her fuckin’ last breath. I can’t be mithered with fuckin’ gigs. 

“Well, she might or she might not. We dunno, do we? Maybe I could make it out for one date and she’d still be here, but maybe she fuckin’ wouldn’t, and then how’d I hold me head up for the rest of me life? I’m not doin’ it.

“Love, don’t.” Liam’s voice softened momentarily. “I know. I miss you too.... Jesus, I don’t know! Would you _stop_? Television? Are you fuckin’--”

Noel eased down the stairs, leaving them to it. He could smell Liam’s black mood before he even reentered the room a while later, and avoided speaking to him as long as possible. But Mam’s albuterol was out of place, and at last Noel had to ask if he had seen it.

“ _Fuck_ you too,” Liam said, as if they had been arguing for hours. Then he put on his jacket and went out.

It was Noel’s night to stay with Mam anyway, so he tried not to worry. But really, Liam out on his own in Manchester could turn into almost anything. He could call his old mates, whom he’d heroically not contacted all this time. He could end up shouting from the top of a pub table, with photographs on every gossip site in Europe before morning. He could be drinking with the bums downtown, pass out on the street--Noel firmly closed his mind when he got to this point in his list. 

He was back by twelve, though, pissed enough to be clumsy but still calm. And he was there in the morning, ready to take over while Noel went upstairs for a kip. But when he came back down later he immediately wondered what was wrong.

The White Album played quietly on the stereo. The curtains were open, tea things stood on the table, the newspaper sat in its place--everything was normal. But it wasn’t. He surveyed the room again. Liam faffed about with tidying like he always did, but with a heavy, frenetic sort of desperation that was totally different to his usual sing-song ways. And Mam’s eyes were closed as usual, but strangely resolute. Why were they pressed shut, as if she didn’t want to see?

“Where’s Joan?” Noel asked. 

“I sacked her.”

_“What?”_

“Sacked her. She was doin' my head in.”

Noel went cold. “I--You’re joking.”

“I can’t stand it. You know how she does that thing---” he made a deep guttural choking noise in his sinuses.

Noel did know. He supposed she had an allergy or needed adenoid surgery or something, but she did it about every ninety seconds, and it was fucking hard to listen to. Obviously she’d been doing it for decades, because she was completely unselfconscious about it. But that had nothing to do with--he looked at his mother. She was paler than she should be. Her heart rate was too high, he could see her pulse from across the fucking room.

“We’ll get another one,” Liam said. “I’ve called the hospital already.”

“You--get another one?”

Liam looked at him as if he didn’t see the problem. “They have a million of them.”

Noel pushed his hands over his face. “Christ, I’m gonna be sick. You’re a fucking moron." There was a thump in his gut, heavy and hard. It felt like a drum that bled, and it heaved every time he took a breath. His hands sang with eagerness, and they stung.

“Go outside,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“Liam.” Noel took a hard breath. “I swore I would never hit you again. I promised and I meant it, but I swear to Christ I’m going to beat your fucking head in if you don’t get out of my sight this very minute. Now go the _fuck_ outside and wait for me.”

Liam went.

Noel tried to calm himself. He really did. He kissed his mother and gave her some water. He put some dishes in the sink. He checked that the heart lamp wasn’t too hot. He moved the newspaper from here to there. Then he gave up and went out to the garden. He could see that Liam was wary and worried but didn’t quite understand why he felt that way. Well, the penny was about to fucking drop. He just hoped they could keep it quiet enough so that Mam wouldn’t be upset.

Liam was standing in the garden, watching the door with the sort of obstinate alertness that told Noel that he didn’t actually understand what Noel was on about, but planned on fighting about it anyway.

“Don’t say a fuckin’ word,” Noel told him. “I can’t even believe you. How can you--? I don’t even know how you lived past infancy, let alone as long as this. Never mind, I do. It was me.”

“Shut _up_. What are you even talking about? Is this about Joan, because I think we can get some other old bird to change the sheets in about thirty seconds.”

“You think. You think! If you thought a bit things might look different around here. Jesus Christ, Liam, when are you going to realize that this is not about you? My god, I thought--” Noel looked at his brother. “I can’t believe I let you make a fool of me again. I can’t believe I trusted you, even for a second. Twelve years we waited for this, Liam, and how long did it last. Two days, three? I should have known better, should have known you’d never fucking grow up--”

“Grow up? Would you stop thinking you know everything, have to run everything, and lighten up for just a second? Why can’t you just be a brother instead of such a fucking controlling, grasping, cold-hearted bastard?”

“Controlling?” Noel actually had to catch his breath. “You don’t understand a fucking thing, do you. I have to run everything. Because what happens when I don’t? Everything I’ve ever tried to do, you do your best to fuck it up. It’s like you’re five babies, and I’m here trying to haul you, me, and everyone else down the road! And I did it for you--for her--” he pointed at the house, “For us. You thoughtless, entitled cunt. I carried everything, our entire career. Everything you have, it’s because of me. Your money, your fuckin’ parkas, the women, your kids in those schools for rich twats--I did that. You never would have done fuck-all without me, ‘cos you can’t plan from one day to the next and then it’s fucking surprise when the house burns down!”

“I know,” Liam said bitterly. “That’s true, and here’s what you never understood about me, even though everyone else gets it; I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t think of what I want people to do and make them do it--make them _want_ to do it, like you can. Of course I didn’t mean to send Joanie away for ever. She was gettin’ on me tits and I wanted her to shut up for a bit, and it just happened. I don't know what people are going to do. I can’t even guess. It’s easy for you and it’s a total fucking mystery to me.

“I know you think I have all sunshine and roses ‘cos I’m not up in the castle planning world domination like you do. But look at me.” He held up his bare hands. “This is all I have. I get by on balls and guts ‘cos it’s _all I’ve got._ Honest to god, I don’t understand the world from one day to the next. It’s all a fuckin’ mystery to me and when you left--” Liam wiped his eyes with his sleeve, viciously. “I need you to believe me, Noel. It’s hard for me to make it through the world on me own. And I think I’ve done well good, considering. I’m never going to be you. I’m never going to be the perfect one, the smart one, the talented one, and I need _you_ to be you so that I can be me--” 

“It’s the same,” said Noel. “It’s the same damned thing. I can do every fucking goddamned thing, except be you. All I needed was for you to stand up and fucking sing, ‘cos guess what. I can sing, but no one really cares. Not like they do about you. They want you. God knows why, but they love you, just like _she_ loves you, and like I---” he caught himself. He rubbed his eyes with shaking hands. “All I needed was for you to show up sober enough to sing your mother-fuckin’ heart out, and you wouldn’t do it. You could never stop letting me down. Even now, even today. You must love it, ‘cos you won’t fucking quit. I let my guard down for a fuckin’ second and you make me regret it--”

Noel’s vision grew dim. A shape had blundered between him and the sky, saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know….”

“ _Fuck_ you didn’t know,” Noel said fiercely, wiping his eyes.

“Alright, then, I did. But I didn’t understand," Liam whispered. "I thought we’d get through. I believed in you, I believed in us so much I never thought for a second we'd run out of chances. I thought we'd last forever, I swear. I didn’t understand what it was costing us.”

“Everything,” Noel said. “It cost us everything.” His head dropped onto Liam's shoulder.

Liam’s mouth began moving over the outer regions of his face, breathing whispers on his skin that said, “I’m sorry, love. Please.”

Noel pushed him away.

“That is our mother dying in there,” he said, pointing at the house, “and there is exactly one person in this world who she wants to look after her, aside from you and me. So go and fucking get her.”


	13. Bands of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ _You_ shut up. It’s my night anyway. You’re the one who has to go.”
> 
> “Oh. In a minute then.”

Liam double checked the address when the cab stopped on Dalkeith Road. Ainscough, it said on a brass plate near the letter slot. That was right. Ordinarily he’d never know where Joanie lived, but he’d gotten it out of Dr George by telling him that he wanted to send flowers to her at home. And he did, Liam reasoned, but later. After he sorted this thing, so that Noel wouldn’t wear that gutted look that was making Liam’s neck itch even after he was out of sight. After they’d sorted….everything.

Joanie lived in a semi detached brick house, broader and nicer than Mam’s. There were holly hedges, box plants, and an arched gate leading to the back garden. There must be a kid, too, because there was a little pair of trainers and a stick as high as Liam’s head thrown down under the hedge. It was a quiet neighborhood, and there was green space somewhere nearby--he could smell the damp scent of trees blowing from out the alleyway. The middle class-ness of the whole thing was weird. He’d hardly ever been in a place like it. He’d gone straight from the council houses of Manchester to central London without really fitting in either one, and this place looked like a BBC comedy about people with problems so normal they hardly even counted. He knocked.

Joanie jumped as if he were the bogeyman when she opened the door. She looked behind her as if guarding something, and surveyed him cautiously. He realized he must have really frightened her and flushed hot with embarrassment. 

“Joan,” he began awkwardly.

“Mister Liam,” she said. She wasn’t going to fucking give him a bit, damn it.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, more rough-like than he meant to. “I wanted...You shouldn’t….” He rubbed his head. “Fuckin’ hell. This isn’t working. Joanie, me mam--”

“Gram!!” came a sharp little finch’s voice from the rooms behind her. Joanie started to the back without looking twice.

“Joshy, don’t move, I’ll be right there,” she said. “Come on, then,” she called impatiently to Liam from down the passageway. “Put wood in t’hole, it’s cold out.”

In the kitchen a little boy about three stood with his grubby socks planted on the worktop, trying to open a jar of Branston pickle. It had slid halfway out of his hands--he couldn’t get good hold on it without losing his balance and tumbling off. 

“Whisht!” cried Joanie. “Didn’t I tell you I’d get it in a minute!” She swept boy and jar off the worktop, dumped one on the floor, and began to open the other.

“I get it meself,” Joshy said sturdily. Then he noticed Liam, and his eyes went round as pennies. 

“You did a good job of it,” Liam said. “I like Branston pickle meself. Got your cheese all ready?”

“Yep.” Joshy climbed onto a chair so he could reach the table, where half a kilo of cheddar had been mauled into bits.

“How did ye do that so fast, ye numpty!” Joanie exclaimed. The boy ignored her and held out a lump of fingerprint-smudged cheese. Joanie’s mouth opened in horror, but Liam had already taken it. 

“Good stuff, that,” Liam told him at the first bite. They nodded and ate cheese together for a bit. This must be Joanie’s grandson, Liam reckoned. She was too old to be mother to such a littleun but he had her apple cheeks and determined look, which he bent on the slices of bread that he was piling with sticky cheese.

“Ready for your pickle now?” he asked. Joshy nodded. Liam took the jar from Joan’s hand and popped it open. The sweet-spicy smell filled the kitchen and the boy dug in with a look of bliss, his little fingers pink from gripping the spoon.

Lennon’s finger’s had been dimply just like that when he was small. God, how he missed it. Liam loved babies. He loved their silly gawping mouths and spidery fingers, the way they were always sniffing around for a tit and making wonder-eyes at you. Sometimes he wished he could start over from the beginning, only a little girl this time, one with blue eyes that looked just like him and Noel, serious and brilliant. How beautiful she’d be! and her little hands would curl round their fingers like bands of love.

Liam sat in the strange light blue kitchen, which smelled of rosewater and dishwashing liquid instead of lavender and wood-chip, but whose refrigerator still hummed in B flat, and suddenly it was easy.

“I was a cunt,” he began. “An’ you don’t have to forgive me. I am sorry, but I know it don’t make a difference. I wouldn’t do it if I were you. But...You love my mam, an’ she loves you. She’s only got a few days left. Will you come back?”

The boy had his sarney done, and was eating with the popping, smackley sounds of a hungry kid. Joanie eyed Liam, looked over at the boy, and back again.

“You’ll have children yourself?” she asked.

“Four.” Liam didn’t know the little one in America, but she counted. It made him feel good to think of her there--a little piece of himself away across the ocean, well off, growing up in a good house, and always with a clean dress on. He had done that, like a bit of magic.

“I think you might be mad,” Joanie told him.

“A bit,” he said simply. “I can’t help it, and the drugs don’t work. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“Are you dangerous?”

“I’m alright. I’m like your lad there; when I start to get a wobble on it’s ‘cos I need to eat, or have a kip, or go play outside. Tell me to mind me manners like you do that fella, an’ I’ll be fine. But please,” he said, “If ye will--come soon. She’s been in a state all day, an’ she’s missing a woman’s touch.”

“I’d like to, Mister Liam,” she said. “I do love her, meself. She’s an easy one to love, though it’s only been a few days. But I don’t have any place to leave this one. I already cancelled his care for the day, and she’s gone off to do something else by now. I’m that sorry.”

“Bring him,” Liam said. That was the simple thing.

“What?”

“Well, t’s not all day, is it,” Liam said. “She wants her bath and her hair done, an’ to have a cuppa while you talk about her drugs an’ all. We’ll go for a walk.”

“Do you want to go for a ride with Mister Liam?” Joanie asked the boy. Joshy nodded vigorously, mouth too full to speak. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Liam since he’d come in.

“Go get your trainers, then,” Liam told him. “We can take your sarney in the cab.”

“Is that Liam back?” Mam asked. Noel stared out at the cab in the street. It made Mam anxious to have either of them away, and to be honest it gave Noel jitters to have Liam out of sight these days, too. He didn’t like to think of how often he’d looked out the window in the last hour or so.

“No, it’s a family I don’t know,” he said. “Could you have a visitor, someone with a kid?” The cab door swung open and--oh dear god. 

Joanie climbed out looking proud as the Queen of England followed by a chubby toddler that was the spit of her and lastly, Liam. The little bugger latched onto Liam’s hand as they came up the walk. Joanie’s face creased in a hidden smile as she watched him adopt Liam’s gangly swagger.

Their mother laughed as though Christmas had come early when they trooped in. Liam boosted the little boy up to her bed so he could see her. He sat comfortably enough on the bed, surveying Mam and all the medical equipment with round dark eyes, but Noel noticed that his hand never left Liam’s knee.

“Joshy, this is me mam, Peggy, and she is the very best mam in the whole world. But not the best grandmam in the world, ‘cos that one’s your’s, right?”The little boy nodded. “Right, my kids can suck it then. And this--” he turned the boy to face Noel, “is my big brother. He’s---listen, you don’t have any brothers, do you?” The boy shook his head. “Good, that’s easier.” His eyes met Noel’s hesitantly. “‘Cos he really is the best brother in the world, and I’d fight you on that one. D’y like football?”

“Yep,” the little boy said. 

“Alright, then. Will two hours do for you, Joan?”

“Aye, it will.” 

“Right. See you in a bit.” They made a show of kissing Joanie and Mam goodbye like they were going off to war and disappeared down the street, punting a football between them. 

Noel got out of the ladies’ way. He wasn’t happy with the rough take of yesterday’s song and poked around the house looking for a spot that sounded right. He ended up sitting in the tub to capture the natural reverb that always makes music sound so good in toilets. It was so nice that he stayed and wrote another one. He didn’t want to think about it yet, but he could see an album forming, tunes pooling in clusters like wax.. He didn’t want to think about it so he didn’t, but he did make sure that he got a clean take of each one as it came. Time enough to decide what to do with it all later.

Some time later he heard the rustle of talk in the living room. Liam was back, with the boy was a sleepy bundle in his arms. His little face was covered with some sort of brown stuff, his head rolled like a ball on a string, and every time Liam moved, the brown smears spread on his parka. 

“Well, we had some hot chocolate,” he was telling Joan, “But I don’t think it’s going to keep ‘im up tonight, is it.”

He shifted the boy in his arms. The chubby fingers tightened possessively on his shoulders, and Noel felt a moment of raw envy. He didn’t understand why small children trusted Liam so quickly, as if he wasn’t the maddest man they’d ever met. Even his own daughter preferred to be handled by Uncle Liam when she was tiny. Liam bent over the bed to let his mother kiss the boy’s dark hair, and Noel had a vivid recollection of him cupping Anais’ skull just like that, years ago, as he bent do to a line of coke. 

He and Meg were living out in the country by then, but the house was always still fucking full of people. It felt like living in an aquarium, and he often wondered if all these people didn’t have houses of their own to go to, and why they stayed so fucking long. He'd quit the drugs without trouble but found he drank more than ever, because hanging out with people on coke is just incredibly boring if one is not also on coke. 

It was a circus as usual on that night, but Liam was sitting calmly on the sofa talking to someone Noel didn’t know, with Anais sleeping like a gold-topped dolly in his arms. Her head lolled on his shoulder, her little bum rested on his forearm, and her feet swung gently with his movement as he chopped out a line. Liam leaned forward, deftly cupping her head with one hand as he bent to the table. Noel thought about intervening--the whole thing was so insane--but thought again before he took two steps. He was too drunk to get there without falling, almost too drunk to speak, and Meg--Noel didn’t want to know where she was, or in what condition. Liam was high but safe, and Anais dreamed comfortably in his arms. Noel watched them for a moment, the big hand absently stroking the little gold head, and went to get another drink.

Joanie and Liam performed the complicated dance of transferring a sleeping child between them. She sank under the boy’s weight and then buoyed up like a sturdy boat. 

“Oh!” she exclaimed as she hoisted him securely up. “How am I going to get this lump down to the bus stop!”

“Cab’s at the end of the street,” Liam told her. “Just step out and he’ll come for you.” Her eyes went round, and she went out without speaking.

“Quit staring. What’s your problem, you weirdo?” Liam asked Noel when she had gone.

“You made it wait for her. You’ve had a cab on the clock since ten o’clock this morning?”

Liam shrugged. “Yeah, what of it? Come on and play me your new tune.”

“How do you know I’ve got a new tune?”

Liam looked at him as if he didn’t understand the delay. “Why have I got to explain how I know that you’ve done what you always fucking do?” he asked. “Just play it already.”

That night they sat in the big chair together with Liam’s head cuddled on his shoulder, Noel’s hand resting on his knee, and Mam snoring like a rhinoceros beside them.

George had taught them to titrate her morphine, to watch carefully for little changes in her color or breathing and add small doses as needed to keep her comfortable. Liam was apt to be too heavy-handed at first and almost put her right in a coma a couple of times, until Noel pointed out that it was exactly like bumping cocaine. After that he became an interested and precise hand at it, and Noel often paused to enjoy the beautifully ironic sight of Liam coaxing their mother’s mouth open so that he could put baby droppers of narcotics under her tongue.

Paul had been for the evening, the doctor had stayed for a long visit, and everyone was worn out. By evening Mam was both exhausted with excitement and too wired to sleep. Liam ended up giving her a dose almost as heavy as the overdose ones before she really sank into a steady sleep. Noel could hear how far under she was from her breathing. Surely she wouldn’t wake for hours and hours. 

Noel found himself more relaxed than he could remember being in years. He was pleasantly aware of Liam’s weight in his lap, the nearness of his soft tufted hair, the hard kneecaps under his jeans. A dim lamp cast a ring of light from Mam’s table, and the lava lamp swirled its liquid heart from its seat on the television. Johnny Mathis crooned on the stereo, a tune that Noel thought his parents must have made love to in some unimaginable time when they had loved each other and been happy. The radiator hummed. Liam sighed a tired little sigh. The lava lamp thrust up its fluid fingers in a slow unconscious dance. It seemed to thread its way between them, liquid and hot.

“D’y think it’ll still look the same when she’s gone and it’s only us?” Liam asked, looking at the lamp.

“Yeah,” Noel said. How could it not? It was always like this, the feeling of being never-alone. Mam passing through wouldn’t change it. And Liam--where could he be that they wouldn’t have this?

“It was too long, Noel,” Liam said. “Twelve years is too fuckin’ long. I mean, maybe it’s not? Maybe any earlier would have been too soon? But this,” he nodded at the lamp, and at the two of them, “it feels right.

“Mm,” said Noel. He wasn’t thinking about it anymore. He was enjoying the tickly ends of Liam’s hair against his face. Depending on how he turned, it could drag little finger-trails over his brow, his eyelid, his cheekbone. If he breathed just right, he could make it give a little shudder that ran down Liam’s neck and made him twist against Noel’s shoulder. “Mm,” Noel said again. He drew a little circle with his nail on Liam’s knee--and this time the shiver ran right down Liam’s whole body.

“ _Noel,_ ” Liam said. Noel realized that he was shaking, and his breath came in one shallow gasp and another. 

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Sorry,” he said again, and nosed Liam’s neck in apology. Oh, but there were nice things here, too: the velvet curved ear and sharp-growing stubble, the warm smell of his skin, the dusty brush of his hair, a faint memory of his morning shave. Noel began to think of closing his teeth on the back of his neck, how the long muscles would yield and contract.

“ _Christ,_ ” Liam whispered. He pressed his hand to face in something like desperation. Noel’s hand had already begun to slide above his knee when the most extraordinary sounds erupted from their mother’s bed. Noel shoved him away so hard that Liam landed in a heap on the floor.

She coughed--choked--sat up and coughed again--let fly a resounding fart. They froze, staring. In seconds she eased back on her pillow and was sleeping soundly again. 

“Bloody fucking Christ on a plate,” Liam said. “I couldn’t have done better meself, d’y know what I mean?”

Noel laughed until his sides hurt. Liam took advantage of his inattention and crawled back in his lap. Noel tried to push him off again, but it was like trying to peel a cat off the sofa.

“Go on,” he said quietly, “You’d better get off me.”

“Don’t want to get off you,” Liam replied from the burrow he’d made of Noel’s neck.

“You--I can’t fucking sleep like this.”

“Can’t you, then?” Liam’s head lifted, suddenly interested.

“Stop it, dick, I’m serious.”

“D’y promise?” Liam asked.

“Fuckin’--fuckin’ shut up, cunt.”

“ _You_ shut up. It’s my night anyway. You’re the one who has to go.”

“Oh,” said Noel. “In a minute then.”

“That’s what I fuckin’ thought,” Liam said. He reburrowed himself in Noel’s neck and began to drowse, still talking to himself.

Noel pulled Liam’s long body more securely onto his lap and told him to hush. The clock ticked on. The red fingers of the lava lamp rose, expanded, cried out in ecstasy, and fell to rise again. A few last little ramblings from Liam brushed his neck. Mam snored on, unconscious of everything, sounding for all the world like his own healthy mam sleeping in her chair of a Sunday. Looking back later on, he felt he ought to have known that this was her last good day.


	14. Passengers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Were you even going to call me?"
> 
> "I asked her to stay. And she said she would."

By morning she was far away. Noel found her and Liam holding hands silently, both of them drifting a million miles from earth.

“Fucking hell. Liam. Were you even going to call me?” he asked.

Liam blinked slowly, as if he hadn’t done all night. “I asked her to stay,” he said, “and she said she would.”

Noel didn’t want to ask but he felt quite, quiet sure that no actual talking had taken place. What planet did Liam wander on when he was away like that? It scared the shit out of Noel to see him that way.

“You’ve been with her like this all night?” he asked. Liam nodded, still half gone.

Their mother’s fingers were powdery blue, and the dusky color extended above her elbows. Her breath was light, shallow. She didn't cough or exhibit any of the signs of distress they had seen before. She was just so frail and barely-there that she could disappear at any fucking moment, and the firm wire of her will felt like a spider’s thread. Suddenly Noel knew that he wasn’t--wasn’t even close--to being ready. 

“Liam.” He touched his brother on the shoulder. Liam jumped and turned to him, startled. “Liam, I need you here. Are you here?” Liam nodded. “Good. Get her some blankets; she’s freezing. Turn up the heat, get her a hot water bottle. Get Paul. I’m calling the doctor.”

It was stupid to call the doctor, though, Noel told himself. There was nothing he could do; she was obviously dying. Why should they lumber anyone else with their family trouble? Noel paced the kitchen three times, four, and dialed his number.

“George, this is Noel. She--”

“Fifteen minutes, lad. Hold on.”

That was the longest day. Noel had never seen a day like it. The nearest thing he could liken it to was the day that he and Meg spent in a private maternity ward waiting for Anais to be born. It was huge, pretty, peaceful there. Meg was tied to the bed by her epidural and didn’t seem to feel much of anything at all. She sat reading magazines, chatting with her mum and sister, and just being stunningly unimpressed that she was about to push his baby out her fanny, while Noel smoked a carton of cigarettes at the open window and tried to look like he wasn’t crawling out of his skin. It was like that, except that this time everyone else was a mess as well, so at least he wasn’t the only one. But on the other hand, they actually got a baby at the end of the day last time. This wasn’t much of a trade.

“Active dying,” George said, with his hand on her arm. “Anywhere from a few hours to several days.” Christ, don’t let it be several days. How would they make it? 

Father Richard and Sister Therese came to pray with her. Noel stayed for it this time. Liam was the only one who remembered the words, so he made the act of contrition for her. The room was crowded and Noel felt his heart about to burst, but it got a little easier when Liam bowed his head, laced his fingers together, and spoke as unselfconsciously as he had done when they were boys. His grown man’s voice, still with his way of talking like he had marbles in his mouth and rolling the r’s like no one else ever did, that accent of his own peculiar planet, spoke words that Noel hadn’t heard since he was a child.

__

Oh my God! I am heartily sorry  
for having offended Thee and  
I detest all my sins because  
I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell;  
But most of all because I have offended Thee, My God.

__

Noel remembered to put Amens in all the right places, at least. 

They took turns to sit with her, and the hours ticked slowly. After a time Liam got out the guitar and handed it to him. He almost said no, until he caught the clear outline of fear and pleading in Liam’s eyes. Then he held out his hand for it. 

He played until he was tired and handed it back to Liam, or tried to, but he wouldn’t take it. On a guess, he held it out to the doctor. George turned pink and waved it away, but when Noel didn’t back down he gave in and sang a pretty song Noel had never heard before, _Four strong winds that blow lonely, Seven seas that run high, All those things that don't change come what may._ Folky stuff, Noel guessed, the kind of thing George must have played as a student in Edinburgh. Things his mother might have heard in cafes as a teenager, if she’d ever had a cafes-and-students life. Well, she was hearing it now, and that would have to be enough.

As Noel expected, Liam could hardly say no after the doctor put his arse out the window and they traded songs for hours. Now and then Noel would reach over to tinker with his phone where it rested on the shelf. Paul read magazines or looked at his phone, which was fine with Noel because at least no one was crying or punching anyone in the face.

Mam grew restless. For a time her hand moved slowly about in the air. “What are you doing, Mam? He asked, though not expecting an answer.

“Saying goodbye to the littluns,” she murmured.

“Are--are you sure?” he asked. 

She didn’t reply, just slid her hand back into his when she was done.

George had warned them that she would likely become unconscious and just slip away between breaths. Noel was in a quiet panic that he would miss it, that she would go while he wasn’t looking, so he planted himself on the bed near her feet when he wasn’t by her side and hardly blinked all day. She seemed to drift in and out of wakefulness like a cloud. The sun broke through and she gazed at them without speaking, as if they were something beautiful or as if she had something to say, then a cloud blew in and she disappeared. There didn’t seem to be any last words. All he had was songs, after all, and all she had was those bright speaking looks that he didn't understand. 

When it was Liam’s turn to be near her he murmured in her ear while she slept, keeping up a stream of songs, prayers, endearments, and nonsense about the kids. Well, he always was a sap, and he never was afraid of anything, was he? He was amazing, and Noel felt like he was watching miracles all day. During an awake period, the two of them stared at each other as though each were watching a movie. She would blink very slowly, watching him. He’d do the same back to her, and they’d both glow a little brighter. It went on like this for hours, Mam and Liam having the most incredible conversations without speaking, until at last Noel wondered if she was putting one over on them and wasn’t really going to die today at all.

Of course she was, though. The amazing thing was that she lingered all day.

It was in the middle evening that Mam’s eyes opened and found him at the foot of her bed. They were were luminously beautiful in her ruined face, and she caught him up in them like a strong wind. He heard her quite clearly.

 _You’re a good man,_ she told him.

 _I love you,_ he said. _Don’t go._

_Love, love_ she said. 

And just like that, she broke the thread that held her and was gone. He saw the light go from her eyes. Liam’s head lifted immediately, though she'd made no move.

“I--I don’t understand,” said Noel. “She was right here. How did I lose her, she was _right fucking here._ I--” Then Liam was beside him, and the guitar went dropping to the floor, and the doctor opened all the doors in the house to let her out.

Noel had never once thought about what would happen once she was actually gone. George called someone he knew that takes away the bodies of the newly dead, and they came right away. It disgusted Noel to see them touch her body, her undignified thighs and ice-mottled skin. His brothers stood tightly by him while they packed her up, and then when they took her away Paul slipped out without speaking. Noel didn’t even realize he had gone. 

The doctor began to gather his gear. He was wan and pale as wax, and his old hands wavered. “We’ll see you again,” Liam told him belligerently, when they stood near the door. George laughed and rubbed his eyes.

“Aye. Aye, you will,” he said. He shook Noel’s hand, but neither could find any words. They blinked at each other until Liam swept him up in a big bear’s hug, and then the old man was hugging Noel too, squeezing his ribs and patting his back, just like a proper old fella.

Liam sat beside her empty bed when everyone had gone. There was nothing left where their mother had been. Rumpled light-blue sheets. A few of her dark hairs still clinging to the pillow. Her pills and medical equipment, useless. Noel went to the kitchen.

The refrigerator and the florescent lights seemed to burn in his skin, stinging and restless. His own edges seemed to blur and waver, and he remembered that he hadn’t eaten all day. But food sounded too difficult to think of. The half a bottle of Glenlivet on the worktop was easier. He swallowed most of it, then he smashed the bottle against the refrigerator over and over until there was nothing left of it but a little curl of glass in his palm, and little burning drops of liquor and glass sprayed all over like raindrops. He broke a few more things. Then he went back into the living room where Liam sat with his head in his hands and touched his shoulder. 

“I’m going to bed,” he said quietly. “I’m knackered.” Liam stirred. He might have heard, but he might not.

Noel turned the shower as hot as it would go and let it blister his back. He was grateful for the tiny, ventless bathroom and the way it heated up like a sauna, because there wasn’t enough sensation in the world to distract him from what he felt right now. If he’d had sandpaper, he would have scrubbed himself all over, and if he'd had any drugs he'd have taken every bit. Instead he picked glass from his hair, cleaned his teeth, and stood in the hot water until he was dizzy. Then he found his way to the room he shared with Liam. 

It was tiny. The window side was his, as always. It had no air, and no room to fucking put anything. Two little dressers that had surely been built for boy-size clothes and a closet about as big; he thought the two of them had done well good to keep it tidy all this time. He put his clothes in the duffle under the bed, rather than in the hamper. After all, they’d be leaving in the morning.

They’d never gone to sleep in this room together, not since they’d been back. And they still might not, Noel thought. Liam might leave, might call a cab, might drive to a hotel near the airport. Those would be the reasonable things to do. Noel put on his sleeping clothes and thought about how reasonable it would be, if he wasn’t so knackered that he couldn’t even contemplate gathering his shit to get out of the house. And truthfully, he didn’t want to go. That was it, really. He didn’t want to run out of this house in the dark, to leave behind their childhood and these strange days with Liam without properly thinking about it. He just—he wasn’t ready, was all.

He turned off the light and got in bed. Then he got out again and opened the door so that a bar of light fell across the foot of both beds. Then he slid back between Mam’s yellow-flowered sheets that smelled of wood chip, lavender, and washing powder. And he waited.

At last there was the sound of Liam’s feet coming slow and heavy on the stairs, and water running in the bathroom. Now and then he made a snuffle or deep cough. He sounded like a man getting ready for bed. Ordinary.

Then Liam entered the room, and he wasn’t ordinary at all. He was Noel’s own infuriating, mad, magical, impossible one: older and sadder now, and infinitely more competent and kind, but the same. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. He kicked off his shoes. He rearranged things on the night stand and put loose clothes in the dresser. He stood in the tiny aisle between the beds, looking out the window and thinking unguessable thoughts. Then he closed the door and moved toward his own bed.

“Liam.” 

His head jerked, and Noel saw that Liam had thought him asleep all this time. He turned, slowly as fate. His face was marked with sorrow and transparent with longing. Noel pushed back the covers to expose the place beside him, the expanse of yellow-flowered bed where Liam could lie beside him if he wanted to.

“Come on,” he said.


	15. Need You Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You do. And you miss me."
> 
> "So fucking much."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're just going to pretend that there isn't a global pandemic on, okay? Because I started this thing before it started and I don't want to bring down my flow, and besides we all want escape anyway--that's we're here reading porn. Long live the internet.

“Come on,” Noel said again, gently.

The long shadow of Liam’s body moved. His arms rose in the streetlight, and the shirt lifted smoothly over his head. Noel couldn’t breathe. Liam’s eyes held him, and Noel couldn’t even look at his bare, shocking body. Liam’s hands clinked on his belt, and his trousers went to join the shirt on the floor. 

If Noel had been telling himself any delusional story about a brotherly croodle it exploded right there, in a starburst of velvety skin. Just like that, impossible. So when at last they lay squished up in the tiny bed Noel just went ahead and kissed him, like he’d been wanting to do since the day he’d left him, twelve years before.

One slow kiss. And another. And yes, he was kissing back. Of course. One kiss here, and another over there. Noel eased his way into Liam’s mouth, remembering all his habits of kissing, his smell, his breath. Big hard bones and raspy strength of a man. But no, he expected to find a rasp but didn’t. Liam had shaved before coming to bed. Noel rubbed his lip across the smoothness to show he noticed. “Hopeful little fucker,” he said quietly.

“Too fuckin’ right,” Liam answered.

The problem was that Liam was such an incredibly rewarding lover. Highly strung and responsive as a girl, but with the rough eager body and forthright hunger of a man. Noel had been lost from the very first time he touched him. 

Off his tits enough to try it on, trembling with shame and desire, Noel had kissed his brother as thoroughly as he knew how just in case he only ever got one chance. Liam didn’t pull away. He lifted his face to be kissed calmly, almost obediently, for the space of several heartbeats. Suddenly he shuddered, yielded, and flamed like he was born to be an instrument in Noel’s hand. He made the most abandoned, gut-twisting sound of arousal Noel had ever heard. Then he bit like a snake and whispered, “That’s for making me wait, cunt.” That was how Noel knew that he didn’t give one fuck about hell, God, or any fucking thing else anymore: because he was never, ever going to regret hearing Liam make that sound.

He made it again now: fucking magic. Noel repeated this kiss that drew it from him. Again, and once more. Liam’s breath grew shaky. Big eager body and the forthright hunger of a man, incredible. Noel wasn’t a perfect husband, but he hadn’t taken a man since Liam. This, and the weeks alone with his own left hand, the burn of loss in his chest, the light in Liam’s face when Noel caught him sneaking looks at Noel kissing him, and the sudden sense of freedom from waiting for disaster were rising like a tide inside him. Disaster had already come. There was nothing left to dread, and Noel was a storm rolling over that beach. He slid two hands to grasp Liam’s face and rolled on top of him. 

God, his hard long body. The way he tongued Noel’s lip to ask for each new kiss, the way Noel could stop his breathing each and every time. He wanted to own Liam’s mouth, wanted to put his teeth in him, wanted to---

But there was an almighty row in the bed somehow. Liam squirming beneath him. Fighting. Noel thought he was asking to have it rough and tightened his grip in his hair. But no, he was earnest, and strong, and maybe really scared because soon enough Noel found himself tossed like a doll against the window and the spot beside him vacant. Above him Liam paced the tiny room, shaking his hands. 

"I won't do it,” he said to himself. “I don’t want to. You can’t make me.”

"Liam. Liam!" 

Liam looked at him in belligerence and despair. "I don't want to," he repeated.

"What do you mean, you don't want to?” Noel said. “You fucking took off your clothes and got in my bed. You were right here with me! You did want it. Liam. You do."

"I--” Liam spread his hands and looked down at his naked body, which showed every sign that he did in fact want to. “‘Course I fucking want it. Don’t be stupid. But there’s wanting it and wanting it, right?”

“No. Tell me what you’re on about, ‘cos I’m not fucking getting it.”

“You, Noel. It’s all you ” Liam stopped and pulled his own hair, silently, in frustration. “You always made like it was some kind of an accident, didn’t you. Like it didn’t happen. Like I was no different from anybody.”

“Are you mad? How could I?”

“I don’t mean out there, knobhead,” Liam said, “I mean in ‘ere, when it’s you and me. That’s what it’s all about, right? All it ever was about. You and me. I was a cunt. I know it. Always falling down drunk, pissing in my clothes when I should have been at work. But what kind of cunt were you?

“All o’ this,” he waved at the house, “I never was sorry for a minute of it, and you were. You always wanted to make like it wasn’t real some’ow. Like you were ashamed of me. Like it were a joke, or a--a nothing. It was never nothin’ to me. And it weren’t to you either-- _shut up_ \--You can’t tell me it wasn’t. I know it like I know my own face, but you never say what you mean, never tell the truth. Not to me, or anybody. And it made me mad. I was mad, Noel. When you left--”

Liam broke off. His gut contracted as if he needed to puke. He pressed his hand to his face, pressed it down. He spoke at last, tiredly. “I’m not going back to that just because I’m mad about you, ‘cos we’re here alone all scared and sad, and no one in the world knows but us. I’m not gonna be your bitch. I’m not gonna let you pray to me and sing to me and--and _cry_ , and then go pretend to everybody that I’m an idiot. ‘Cos I’m right fucking tired o’ that. I’m not. I’m--I’m the man who loves you. And if we do this, we do it like grownups.”

And just like that he walked away, across the hall. To Mam’s room. Noel followed him.

“Here,” he said. “Really.”

“Yeah.”

Her little lamp stood glowing on the bedside table. Noel himself had turned it on when he came up because it looked so lonely with the door shut and dark. He could actually see her blue pajamas laid over a chair.

“This,” he said, “is a fucking granny’s room.”

“Yeah.” Liam looked around, not too concerned.

“Liam, she’s not even cold. And if you think I’m going to--” he couldn’t even say it, looking around her room-- “in our dead mother’s bed, when I spent my whole life keeping it from her--”

“She knew about that,” Liam said.

“ _What??_

Liam gave him one clear look and crawled onto the bed. “She knew,” he repeated.

“What are you even talking about, she fucking knew. She didn’t know.”

“She did,” Liam said simply. “She knew about you and me.”

“That isn’t. Fucking. True.” Noel said. “You’re imagining stuff, making yourself believe things that never were.”

“That’s what I thought too. Because I did think so, for years and years, and it don’t make any sense, does it? What mam, knowing her own two lads was bonking each other--”

“Christ, would you shut up?”

“No would you shut up, fucking know-it-all twat, ‘cos I’m not fucking done yet. ‘Cos if she knew, she’d have had a fucking thing or two to say about it, right? So I just thought I must be wrong. But when you left--” he stopped, and was silent a long time. Noel laid his hand on his knee. They were both on her bed now, Liam cross legged in the middle and Noel curled up with his feet hanging over the side.

“When you left, I went down to the pub,” Liam began again. “And I stayed about four days. After a while, she come in. And the way she talked to me... she talked to me like I’d lost a lover. Not a band, not a brother. She--I don’t know how to say it. His hands moved helplessly in the air. “She knew what you were to me.” He met Noel’s eyes, combative, frightened, and, Noel thought, tremendously brave.

“What did she say?” he asked.

“She said to be patient.” Liam laughed, a sad choking sound. “She said you were a stubborn cunt, and well proud. That it might be a gey long time. She said not to notice what you do, nor say nothin’ when you won’t shut up bragging about your new best friends being so great, an’ how you don’t miss me at all. To be busy and happy and do all the things I always wanted to do before. To only ever say good things about you, and say ‘em all the time so you’d hear ‘em.” He rubbed his eyes, fiercely. “I tried, Noel--I did. I couldn’t. Sometimes I thought it was my fault that I couldn’t do it and sometimes I thought it was yours. I thought you were doing it on purpose.…”

“Shh,” said Noel. “It’s over now. Don’t cry.” He took Liam’s hand and turned it over, to see the kissing spot glowing there. Liam gave it unresisting. That limp and hopeless hand frightened him more than anything since reentering that house, but he didn’t let it go as he spoke.

“I hated everything afterward, Liam. For years. I didn’t think of you and me. Even when we first came back here I didn’t. It was like it never happened. Or I made like it was a mistake when I did think of it, ‘cos it was all a mistake, right?” A drop slipped from Liam’s nose and stained Mam’s duvet. Noel folded his hand over Liam’s. “I stopped thinking of us. It wasn't real anymore. But it didn't matter if I didn't think about you, d’y know what I mean? You were there anyway. Because you’re on the inside.” Liam looked up. Noel went on hurriedly with his confession, lest he lose his nerve.

“Like, I’ve got a pancreas over here, right? And a liver over here, and intestine over this way. And I’ve got Liam. Here.” Right in the center of him was where Liam lived. The smooth spot below the ribs, covered with nought but a mask of skin and muscle, where just inside roared the blood, the gut, the electrical pulse and the light that made him get up in the morning. He put Liam’s hand to it.

“This is you. When I hated you, I hated everybody. I’ve got a great fucking life, you know? So I just couldn’t figure out why I hate virtually everything that ever happened to me.

“I’m tired.” He shook his head wearily. “I’m tired of being this miserable fucking bastard. I can’t keep doing it. Nothing is really right. I can’t--I’m not me, Liam. I can’t be me without you.” He still had Liam’s hand, rolling its long bones deep between his fingers to reach the soul underneath. “I need you. Please.”

“Yeah,” Liam said.

“Yeah,” Noel repeated. “Yeah?”

“You do.” He slid and pulled at Noel until they sat within the penumbra of each other’s sprawled legs. “And you miss me.”

“So fucking much,” Noel breathed, and placed Liam’s hand against his mouth.

It was better in this bed anyway, Liam decided, even without all that, even without Noel kissing his eyelids all shaky and leaving little spots of wet on his face. Liam had bought Mam the bed himself not long ago, a big fat one. Here his knees didn’t keep knocking on the wall, and it didn’t have the springs and silly racket that made him feel like he’d snuck in through a bedroom window.

As for getting here, that was scary. Taking his clothes off was fucking hard work. But the moment he shoved Noel off and walked away was the worst, because what if he didn’t follow him? What if he went down to sleep in the chair, or shut him out behind that chipboard door, or even called a cab and went away, just like that? But Liam had seen Noel’s face all blank with lust before he walked away, and felt pretty sure none of that would happen.

And it was worth it in the end, wasn’t it, because here they were with Noel stretched out on top of him fierce as a badger, face all wet, pinning him to the bed and making those heart-stopping noises. Liam hardly even had to touch him. He tried it for a minute, stretching his hands out, lifting his chest and just breathing a little heavier and yep, that did it just as well because Noel grabbed his wrists and pressed his body down in a way that ended Liam’s don’t-touch-him experiment in about half a second.

The thing was, Noel was such a fucking fantastic kisser. Liam used to think about it sometimes, years after, lying next to whatever wife or woman it was at the time. Thinking about how boring and stressful it is to always be in charge, to act like he knew what he wanted, to fucking think about what _she_ wanted, as if thinking during sex had ever worked. Remembering the utter concentration with which Noel used to kiss him, and how Liam didn’t have to think at all.

It was like being kissed by hungry lasers. Noel kissed like he was investigating a miracle, all wonder and determination. Liam figured he really must be a miracle to hold Noel’s attention like this, to get those hands, this mouth, that breath on his skin. 

He became aware that Noel was still dressed, his clothes rubbing between them like cellophane wrappers. Irritating. “Get this off,” he said, pulling at them. Together they peeled him out of his clothes. Liam was a little embarrassed by the whuff of air that left his mouth when Noel knelt over him to throw the last of it away.

“How do you even look like this?” he asked. Mam’s bedside light cast a gold wash on the room, throwing shadows that made all Noel’s hard lines stand out. Being old made him look so fucking masculine, darker and harder than he used to be, with little glints of silver all over him.

"Like this?” Noel asked, looking down.

“Yeah. Like this.” Liam drew a line over the grooves on Noel’s arms and stomach. Noel didn’t say anything but he couldn’t hide his grin. People always used to say that Noel was the homely one. Liam guessed they both knew the truth now. 

Noel eased his body against him. Nothing between them anymore. Christ. Liam pushed up to make him do it again. Noel made a sound, and that was good because there was no way Liam could keep shut up about it. Better if he wasn’t the only one. Kisses, more of them. He had that way of closing his teeth on Liam’s neck that made sparks shoot right out of the top of his head--Liam didn’t even know what he was doing anymore. Noel spat in his hand, and Liam began to think he might really lose his mind. 

“Noel,” he said. “Noel.” His brother looked at him, questioning. Liam wriggled and pushed so that Noel began to nudge lower. 

“You're sure?” Noel asked. Liam just thrashed until his knees were on the outside and Noel slipped into the hollow between. Talking was too fucking hard anyway. And stupid. But Noel wasn’t having it. He just kept looking, not kissing, until Liam found his words again.

“Fucking yes,” he gasped.

“Okay. Just let me--” Noel stripped himself off him and hurried into their room, naked and clumsy. Fuck, what was Liam going to do? How could he even live with a brother like this, such a gorgeous sparkly thunderstorm who would melt his brain with sex and then turn around and be so fucking _cute?_ He was absolutely fucked.

Noel clanked over a dozen little bottles on his dresser before he found the one he wanted and re-crossed the passage. Liam was still waiting with that shell-shocked breathless look. Noel was a little scared by how much it turned him on, to be looked at like he was the second coming of Christ. Fucking invincible. Like he couldn’t lose. It was fucking irresistible--and turned his nerves to jelly. He dropped his jar of three hundred dollar night cream, picked it up, and dropped it again. At last he made it back to Mam’s little gold-lit room and Liam. No, it was still real and he wasn’t sorry. No, it was still amazing. Liam’s body was still a fucking miracle. Noel eased himself over it, kissing, sliding his dick over Liam's belly and chest, putting Liam’s hands back on him, finding ways to make him shiver.

“You missed me.” he said.

“Every day,” Liam gasped.

"And you want me.”

“Yeah.”

Noel began to work at the clumsy, difficult little pot of cream. “Do you want me to use my fingers first?”

“No. I don’t want none o'that. Just go slow.”

Slow, Noel told himself, as he slicked himself and began to enter his brother’s body. Slow, he thought, watching the red flush deepen on his chest. Twelve years, he reminded himself, watching Liam's interior listening look as he waited for his body to adjust. Noel was trembling with restraint, sweating with it. Slow.

“Okay,” Liam breathed. “Yeah. I'm ready now. I want--”

“Me.”

“Fuck--fucking yeah. I do.”

“Like that?” Noel whispered, and pushed a little. Liam didn’t reply. “Like that?” he asked, rolling again. Suddenly Liam’s eyes met his, glossy and huge.

“Don’t fucking _ask_ me that. Look at me, Jesus, would you just come on?”

He was a disaster, a total gorgeous fucking mess. 

“Alright,” Noel murmured. “Alright, I’m sorry.” He kissed the translucent eyelids. They trembled, so he kissed them once more. “I just--oh my god.” He began with short little thrusts at first, growing longer and braver as Liam didn't protest and he became more sure that he wasn't going to lose it in the next second.

“Yeah. Yeah. Oh.” Liam's hands closed down on his arse, setting the pace.

“Christ. Liam.” It was terrifying, and gorgeous, and he was never going to stop.

“Come on, cunt.”

“Yeah.”

“Noel, I--”

“Show me.”

 _"Fuck._

"Liam."

“I--”

“Yes. God. _Love.”_


	16. His Banner Over Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Me. That you couldn't get me back."
> 
> "Us."

Liam could tell that Noel was there with him before he was even really awake, but still he opened his eyes to check. Something about the smell of him and the weight in the bed, and the satisfied ache in his own body. Yeah, there he was, breathing serenely in the dull gray of dawn like a stone god cut into the wall of some wankery museum. They had fallen apart in their sleep and Noel lay flat on his back, profile turned to the ceiling. His chest above the blanket was both beautiful and frightening, harsh like marble. It seemed like an overstep to touch him. Liam watched him sleep, hardly daring to breathe.

But then Noel moved in his sleep--all on his own, without Liam doing a thing--so that his warmth pooled all around them, threaded one sleeping arm under Liam’s head, and pulled him tight. Just like that. A little miracle. Except that now Liam was fucked, becuase here he was all pressed up against him with the scent of his armpits and their spunk from last night and all the other leftover-sex smells under the blanket making him crazy, and Noel seemed to be actually asleep.

Liam waited as long as he could, thinking he ought to let him get a few more minutes of sleep. That he didn’t want Noel to wake up tired and angry, yelling at Liam for bothering him. Thinking that if that happened, maybe everything would all be the same again. Fucking Cinderella or something. They’d put on their clothes and go, and all of this would be dead like Mam.

But thinking like that just made it harder to wait. Fuck waiting, really, ‘cos what if he waited too long and Noel woke up late for his plane and Liam lost his chance at all this? Time was running down, and the only thing that made sense was to take every chance he got. So pretty soon he was nosing around Noel’s neck and armpit, breathing so deep he got lightheaded trying to memorize the smell of it. Noel didn’t seem to mind, even sleeping. He tightened his arm on Liam’s head and tucked him further down. That meant that Liam could nudge lower, rubbing and sniffing over his rough chest and moving toward his nipple, and _that_ was pretty fucking rewarding.

Everyone has a weakness and these were Noel’s--little tan-pink beauties that made him shiver and gasp like a girl if Liam licked and bit them just right. Maybe he still remembered how? Yeah, he did, because see now how Noel lifted and rolled himself open like that, and how it looked like he might wake up after all?

And here he was. One hand slid down Liam’s back to urge him closer, and the other moved to cup his head. He arched against Liam’s tongue, and he made that girl-pitched noise that began in his throat and travelled down to growl in his chest. His thumb ran over Liam’s cheekbone.

“Feels good,” he murmured sleepily. Liam caught his breath.

Noel was hardly beginning to be awake when Liam jolted like an electrical shock in his arms. The stunned feeling of it brought him to as much as the arousal already humming through his body. He touched Liam’s cheek again. “What is it?” he asked.

“Say ‘at again,” Liam said.

“What, ‘Feels good?’” he asked.

Liam nodded, face hidden.

“Feels good,” he repeated, and Liam shivered again. “It does feel good. Liam.”

Liam shivered every time the words left his mouth. Noel could feel him bite his own lip. He didn’t understand why Liam reacted so strongly to something that was just the truth, but he really, _really_ liked the electrical way Liam felt when he said it. He liked Liam’s breath on his skin, and the wet of his mouth on one nipple, and the heat rolling out from under the cover. So he got right down close to Liam’s ear and told the truth some more. “You make me feel so good, you do,” he whispered. “Fuckin’ incredible, the way you touch me. Look at you. So fuckin’ gorgeous, never get tired of lookin’ at you. Want to put my hands all over you, feels so--” 

And that was as far as he got. Because Liam pushed him onto his back, peeled away the blankets that had fallen between them during the night, and threw one knee over Noel’s body. He looked huge, and dangerous, and the animal shone bright in his eye. He shook his head in mute frustration. He had no words. But he spat on Noel’s dick and took him so fast and hard that Noel’s own words evaporated like smoke. All he could do was hold Liam’s thighs and fumble after the stupid one-syllable ones, but even those escaped. They slipped away like water, beginning with _like that, more,_ and _yeah_ , going on to _Christ_ and _there_ and _fuck_ , ‘til the only one left was _yes_.

Later on Noel slipped out of bed to grab his phone. It was lying on the nightstand where he’d left it, bland-faced between two unoccupied twin sized beds, as though nothing had passed. Through the bathroom door came the sound of Liam singing in the shower. He sounded happy. Noel grinned and slid back into the warm spot to text Cecile.

“Sharing some files with you. Confirm when you get them. Nineteen all together.”

It was pretty early on a Sunday morning, but her reply was almost instant.

“Certainly.” 

Noel began sharing all the songs from the last weeks. This time the pause was very long. At last he asked, “Have you got them?”

Her reply blinked blue on his screen. “Holy shit,” it said.

He didn’t reply. 

“Um. These aren’t all you.”

“No.”

“Holy shit,” it said again.

“You can’t say anything,” he warned. “Unless my plane goes down over Heathrow. Then give them to Anais.”

“Is everything okay, Chief?”

“Just saying. The album’s to be called Pearls if it does.”

“Pearl...like your mother's name? Oh my god that’s really sweet.”

“Do not ruin my asshole credibility, Cecile. I have a reputation to keep up.”

“No, sir. Pearls is a fine name.”

“Where are the recordings stored?” 

“What recordings?”

“That’s the spirit.” Noel typed. Then he relaxed. 

It felt like the last weight off his mind--which was ridiculous, because what was he if not in the biggest clusterfuck of his life? But it was good to have that sorted for now. He had a pretty good idea what kind of material he was carrying around in his pocket, and it felt good to have them safe. He listened to Liam dressing in the toilet and realized that despite the tragic quiet in the house and Mam’s empty bed downstairs, he felt like a million quid.

Liam came in, buttoning the blue shirt Noel hadn’t been able to look away from the other day. His gaze instantly fastened on the phone in Noel’s hand, and went from it to his uncovered chest. “What are you doin’ wi’ that?” he demanded, suspicious. “Have you been recording?”

“Recording what?” Noel scoffed.

“I don’t know... Me, maybe. Like, noises and that?”

“What would I do that for, cunt?”

“To--to remember or summat, maybe.”

You’re a tit,” Noel told him. “Come here, tit.” Liam didn’t move. “Come here,” Noel repeated.

Liam edged closer--close enough that Noel could tackle him sideways, throw him down on the bed, and put his nose in his neck. 

“I don’t need a recording to remember that, knobhead,” he told him. Liam’s smile was like the sunshine that presently broke through the window. 

Noel rubbed his face against the smooth jaw, wondering how he stayed looking so young. He could see Liam watching him, waiting for permission to kiss him. At last he gave it by putting a few little kisses on Liam’s face, mindful that he hadn’t been up to clean his teeth yet. Liam had no such reservations though, and--well. It would be hours yet before Noel was ready to go again, but still he found himself pushing aside the blankets and edging closer--until he encountered Liam’s hand outstretched like a wall.

“None of that,” Liam said. “You’ll have me smelling like a Princess Street sauna.”

“So?”

“So I just got clean.”

“You don’t like having me on you?” Noel began to insinuate his hand between Liam’s buttons. Liam pushed it away.

“I fuckin--I have to go on a fuckin’ plane today.”

“Yeah. You do,” Noel agreed, still fussing with stupid buttons.

“Tart.”

“Yep,” Noel said, and grasped his collar.

Liam sighed, but he still didn’t let Noel get close to his clean shirt. They fought over it silently, and Noel began to think that he’d be ready a lot earlier than he’d expected, until his stomach gave a loud rumble. Liam pulled away and looked at him.

“I don’t want to make another meal in this fucking house,” he said seriously.

Noel stroked his hair. “It’s all right. We’re going for a walk. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

“Do you want to go downtown?” Noel asked when they were out on the street.

“No, I don’t want to see it. Let’s go the other way. Once I go down there I don’t want to come back again, d’y’ know what I mean?” Liam said. They turned toward Tatton Road and walked a little way in silence. “Do you want anything from the house?” 

“No. I’d burn it down if I could. Do you?”

“Maybe a photo album, but nothing else. We can give it back to the Council, and make them sort it all. Paul might want something, I guess.”

“Where did Paul go, anyway?”

“Where do you think?” Liam said. “Down to the pub. With Da.” Noel looked at him. Liam said nothing, and pushed them off onto a quieter street. It was brighter here, with a fresh breeze. Their shoes made a little clicking on the sidewalk, and now and then an old person walked past with a little dog or a newspaper.

“What,” Noel said, when he caught Liam looking at him for the fourth time.

“Nothing.”

“Come on.”

“You just--you look so good. I wish I had something nicer to wear,” Liam confessed.

Noel looked down. He had on one of the new polos that Cecile had sent: aqua-colored, with a deep placket so that it fell open over his collarbones, and so tissue-thin that the features of his chest showed through like a topographical map.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Fuckin’--would you at least button up or something so I can think?”

“It doesn’t have any buttons.” Noel grinned.

“Fuck you.” 

“Here.” Noel fastened one button on his denim jacket and undid one on Liam’s shirt. “Now we’re even. “

“Noel.”

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t you ever think---well. Our mam.”

“What about her?”

“Didn’t you ever think that she couldn’t have been as normal as she looked to us?”

“What??”

“No really, hear me out on this. Don’t look at me like that. She was a fuckin’ fantastic mum, and she did what no one else could do. Live through our da, not turn you over to the police, raise me to live past twenty and that. But...I mean, she picked our da, for one. But really, Noel, she was _our_ mam. She produced _us._ Doesn’t that tell you that she must have been a little more fucked in the head than you and I could tell?”

“No,” said Noel blankly. “I never thought of that. Never once.”

“Well maybe you want to fuckin’ think. Might make you feel a little better, if you know what I mean.”

They made it about half a block before Noel found himself pushing against Liam with his shoulder. Liam pushed back. Noel kicked up one foot to interrupt Liam’s feet as he walked, and he almost went down--but came back and went straight for a chokehold on Noel’s neck. They grappled, sweating, until they found themselves face to face with Liam breathing down on Noel’s face and their eyes locked tight--and Liam set him aside.

“Noel.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re almost out of time. I need to know your plan. I--I can’t leave like this.”

“You’re gonna hate it.”

“I know. Still.”

“Hold on then. We’re almost there.”

But before they got there, they passed a shop window full of weird 20th century stuff--cricket bats, record players, armoires, and, on a headless mannequin in the corner, a butter-colored canvas jacket with copper buttons and a shearling collar, like something a cowboy might wear.

“Like that?” Noel asked. He could see by Liam’s expression that he loved it.

“There’s no one in there,” he scoffed, though. “It’s too fuckin’ early.” 

“Go wait over there,” Noel said, pointing to a park bench across the way, and pulled out his phone.

“It’s not gonna....”

“Fuck off,” said Noel. “What am I rich for if not to get what I fucking want? It won’t take long. You just wait and no...no wandering off.”

“I’m not fuckin’ wandering off. Who’s a fuckin’ kid, gonna wander off?” Liam said as he ambled across the street. Noel texted Cecile. There was a bit of back-and-forthing, and it took longer than he wanted, but after a time the shop door opened and an old man came out, looking neither right nor left, set a bag on the sidewalk, and went back in. Noel picked it up and crossed the street to where Liam watched him, waiting, his eyes all lit up like Christmas.

“That was amazing,” he said.

It occurred to Noel, dizzily, that he’d missed the look on Liam's face as much as anything else over the past twelve years--the look that said that he, Noel, was the most brilliant, sexy, amazing thing in the universe. He’d do a fucking lot for that look. Buying a jacket didn’t even begin to touch it. 

“Just put it on,” he said roughly.

It was a little snug, which was what Noel had been hoping for, and shorter than anything Liam had worn in years so that it showed off his long legs in their dark jeans. Noel didn’t bother to pretend that he wasn’t looking. Liam shifted back and forth in shy pride.

“Check the pockets,” Noel said. “I asked for something else if they had it.” Liam patted the front pocket and pulled out a pair of gold-rimmed aviators. His smile made--well, maybe it didn’t make the whole twelve years worth it, but it went a long fucking way. Noel wondered why he didn’t put them on right away but stood there turning them over in his hands, blushing deeper by the second. “What?” he asked. 

“I just. I mean. I love it when you buy me things, is all,” Liam confessed.

Noel took the glasses and put them on Liam’s face. “Knobhead. Did you think I didn’t know?”

A little while later they stood in a dodgy convenience store in Stockport, peering at a row of little black plastic bricks in a locked case.

“You’re fucking joking,” Liam said. Noel didn’t reply. “You’re right. I fucking hate this idea.”

“That's my price,” Noel said.

“Does it even make calls?” Liam asked.

“I don’t know, but I know it doesn’t have fucking Twitter,” Noel said. “Does this make calls?” he asked the girl behind the counter. 

She was about twenty, with long spangled nails and gold fronts on her teeth, and couldn’t possibly care any less about middle-aged white guys. “I mean it’s a phone,” she said skeptically.

“It makes calls,” Noel told Liam.

“Does it text?” Liam asked in disbelief.

“Does it text?” Noel relayed.

“You’d have to read the label, wouldn’t you.” The girl didn't even look up.

“Fuck me,” Liam said.

Noel examined the label through the sticky glass. “Yes, he said. “It texts.” He didn’t say that the thing didn’t even have touch screen or even a keyboard; you had to do some sort of Morse code shit to make it work. Liam could find that out later.

“Fucking bullshit,” Liam muttered rebelliously. “If I’m doing this, you are too.”

“Go on, pull the other one.”

“I mean it. It’s both of us, or none,” Liam said, and his jaw began to take on a familiar, stubborn jut. Noel sighed. 

“Two, please,” he told the shop girl.

A little while later they stood on the King Street West bridge. 

“This is stupid,” Noel said.

“Shut up, cunt.” Liam said, as he tried to wedge in to get a good view of the River Goyt in the background.

“Don’t--don’t fucking post that one.”

“‘Ere, you stand in front. You’re shorter.”

“Fucking....”

“You love it. Be still.”

In the end they snapped three photos. In the first their foreheads rested together, looking downward, old and a little scarred. Loss. In the second, Noel gave the camera his best rock-star scowl while Liam leaned over his shoulder, eyes wide with mad delight. In the last Noel’s grin was broken up with laughter as he shied away from Liam’s tongue, stuck deep in his ear. 

“Really?” Noel asked. 

“That’s my price,” Liam said. He captioned the set COME ON LOVE and hit send. The phone went dark, then lit up with responses like a live thing. Hastily he powered it off. They leaned on the railing, looking at the inert silver body in his hand. “I don’t think I can do it,” he said.

“It’s the only way. We wouldn’t make it a day otherwise. You know we couldn’t. I’m--here.” Noel laid their two palms flat side by side over the water and placed the two phones crosswise upon them. Liam began to smile.

“Alright,” he said.

“Y’ready?” Noel asked. He counted them in. On four they launched them into the smooth grey sky, and watched them fall sparkling into the river. 

They stood silently awhile, watching the dark green river slide gently under them, heading first to the Mersey, then Liverpool and the sea. Time seemed to slip past, and Noel couldn’t tell where they were going.

“I have something for you,” he began.

“Mm?” said Liam. Noel couldn’t answer. “What is it, then?”

He couldn’t think of what to say, so he just pulled the thing from his pocket and put it in Liam’s hand, a little slip of silver, wan in the grey morning. Liam turned it over in his palm.

Liam’s lips moved without sound. “What is this?” he asked..

“It’s a key.”

_“Noel.”_

“It’s a house,” he clarified. Liam just looked at him. “In Highgate. Just a few blocks from yours. Close to the tube, for me. Pretty boring little house for the neighborhood, really. Three stories, little garden in back….”

Liam kept looking from it to him and back again, warily. “You’re giving me a key to an ‘ouse.”

“Our house,” Noel said at last. “I’m giving you the key to our house.” Liam said nothing at all. “I reckoned--well. I’ll want to see you. And you’ll--I mean we’ll need a place to be just us. Easy for both of us.”

“Our place.”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s it, innit? I mean just--watch football or--or whatever. Just a kitchen and a living room, apart from the families where we can--”

“And a bedroom.”

“Well. Yeah. I mean there’s three, really. Two on the second floor, yours and mine. And on the third--”

“Ours.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long silence.

“Don’t you think this is gonna look pretty fuckin’ weird in the press?” Liam asked.

“I don’t think so,” Noel said. “I mean I’ve got six shell corporations behind this, and the principals of the last one are you and me. But even if it does come out, people can only see what they expect to see. It’s hard to believe how dumb people are. I mean, Bono and Edge have a boat.”

“A what?”

“Bono and Edge. Have a boat.” Liam’s eyebrows rose. “And matching houses next door to each other on the Mediteranean.” Liam opened his mouth. “And own a hotel together a mile from both their houses. With a penthouse suite that no one is ever allowed to go in.”

Liam looked like Christmas had actually come. “You’re--you’re joking. Bono and Edge? Fuckin’ brilliant. Noel, I can’t even. This is….Can I see the penthouse??”

“Didn’t I just tell you no one’s allowed in?” Noel said. “I’ve never seen it. I’ve been on the boat, though. Bunch of bunks for the crew and one master suite.”

“Can I see the boat?”

“Not a chance,” Noel said disapprovingly. “You’ve got a thing for quiet guitarists.” Liam just grinned.

“But really,” he began again, “You’re not, like, worried?” 

“Fuck’em. Why shouldn’t I have a house in town? An hour and twenty minutes on the train is fucking bollocks. And why shouldn’t I have a house with my brother? Besides. We’ll put an urn on the mantel, and we’ll just tell them that we finally got Mam to move to London.”

Liam laughed out loud, that shining wonder-look again. This was how Noel knew that Liam had never had a serious male lover beside himself: because no man would ever walk away from that look without a fight, and then Noel would know about that guy.

They fell silent, leaning against the railing. Liam turned the key over in the big palm that Noel had kissed last night. His lashes trained to the horizon, then returned to his hand. Now the sun was beginning to break through.

“You bought us an ‘ouse,” he said reverently. Noel realized that he hadn’t believed it until this moment. 

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“The day after Da came.”

Liam turned to him, sudden and mystified. “Why?” he asked. “Did you think then--?”

“No,” Noel admitted. “I didn’t yet, or didn’t know I did. But...there was all that, d’you know what I mean. Da. And Paul. And you were there. Mam crashing, and the doctor. And you were there for that. I went back to bed and... I just saw _everything,_ you know? Everywhere I’d ever been. And you were in all those, too. And I--I just wanted it. You and me. A place that's ours.” 

“Ours,” Liam repeated.

“Yeah. I mean, I’m a cunt and you’re an idiot as well as a cunt, I know all that. But I thought--I felt--.” He took a breath and started over. “I was afraid. I was afraid that once we left here, we couldn’t get it back.”

“Me. That you couldn’t get me back.”

“Us.”

“Us.” Liam smiled in satisfaction.

Traffic whooshed by behind them, ordinary people going out to Blackpool or the Arndale, or whatever it is that normal people do, Noel couldn’t even imagine. He wondered what he and Liam looked like to them, two men standing on a bridge. The river slipped past, drawing them resistlessly down. 

Liam pressed silently against him, hip, shoulder and thigh. Noel turned to look at him, all tongue-tied and aflame with happiness, and wondered exactly how much they looked alike right now. Then, because he was pretty sure that no one was looking, because he had a lifetime of reasons to believe that people only see what they expect to see, and because most of all, fuck them--he kissed him. Just a little buss at first, a small nudge of warm face and then, just to do Liam’s head in, slipped him a little tongue.

“Cunt,” Liam murmured against his mouth.

“Too right,” Noel whispered back. He laced their fingers together carefully and together they looked down; two hands just alike, and the key cupped between them like a flame.


End file.
